INFORMATION REQUIRED FOR PREPARATION OF NARRATIVE REPORT TO SUPPORT CLAIM

Company Name: XYZ Limited

Project/Description/Website: An electric power assisted water craft for beach

lifeguards- a cheaper alternative to a jet ski. One
person can launch rescue or patrol craft, which
can be solar charged.

***Have you received any grants? If so which ones?

YE 30 APRIL 2014 AND 30 APRIL 2015

Project Name:

Baseline Technology / Competitors:

In leisure market- SeaBob- aimed at luxury yacht market. Lie on powered electric powered water
toy. How we differ rom them is they are super expensive. Our product is just as powerful as their top
model but theirs is 9-10k euros. Ours is about 3k pounds. Also theirs dives under water and is sued
fro diving.. ours just stays on top of water. Heavier than our product…

We are more cost effective… ours stays over water… theirs is neutrally buoyant.. sits on water and
goes under water. Our stays on top of water… just stays on top of water… product different… theirs
is smaller than ours so looks different their propulsion is different to ours… its more complicated
than ours… hence why more expensive. Its can also kind of be used for life saving… but not
buoyant…

Other competitors in leisure market- not as close to us are hand help diving scooters. The Blade
Fish…. SeaDo Sea scooter. They’re not really as close though in competitors as much cheaper… don’t
go as fast as our product.

Technological Advancements / Uncertainties (and examples) / Overcome:

Biggest tech part was the propulsion- challenge here was to make a propulsion system that was
efficient and also affordable to manufacture.. wanted to also design a propulsion system that was
completely modular, to be designed for future products any products that can do sea propulsion…
one of biggest challenge in the design… Cooling…. And also controller…. Controller is the electronic
brains of product.. three components to tech: motor, the controller and the battery. The controller is
the middle man that decides how much power to take from battery back and give to motor. The
motor has 3 ph and controllers job to tell how much power to send to the motor. But everything I’ve
described is not new… brushless motors with battery packs.. what’s new about our design is the fact
that we’ve got our motor sits in the water… so we have really good cooling of water as water flow
directly around aluminium casing f motor. Normally, other designed of products like smaller boats,
other electric boats, they have the motor inside the hull of the bats and have to pump water up to
cool it… we though this was complicated…. Pumping system can get blocked by seaweed… its like a
torpedo shape… water flows around and cools it… and directly down to propeller.

Trolling motors are used for small fishing boats…… they sit under water…. But no one uses it in way
we do.. unique in our design… trolling motors have open propeller, much easier to use where water
freely flows around propeller. We couldn’t do that due to safety aspect for open propeller next to
body. How to create a safe propulsion system with a propeller than cant be touched. So our
propulsion system is the motor is in the water and the water flows around it and through a ducting..
propeller in a tube…. Big long tube and a motor with propeller inside… cant touch properly… as it is
inside tube… too far for u to reach inside with grills. Part of design challenge was how to make it safe
but reduce water flow because if u just put massive grill on front or back you’ll block water flow…
you’ll get more drag in water… how to create a propulsion system that was safe, with good cooling,
but also efficient and low drag.

Cooling of controller is really important, so positions controller right above motor… the controller is
directly above motor so water also takes heat from controller to keep cool.

1. Bespoke water craft design

Challenge: how to make a product that can be adapted to leisure market… the body of water craft is
a moulded body so it is made out of a dense moulded foam which is call EPP expanded
polypropylene. Has a removable float for rescue… part of that design. Material selection.. had to test
some materials in salt water to see how it reacted… do lots of research into material selection. Tried
and tested some materials: so before the EPP, we made prototypes out of polystyrene, out of fibre
glass, the fibre glass worked well but was too heavy to pick up.. also if puncture hole in shell, it
would sink to bottom of see.. expanded EPP cant sink it- it’s a big moulded float essentially. Also
experimented with diff densities of EPP… can get it in diff hardness and densities.. did lots of
experiment with them to make sure it was durable and had a little give… eg when u crash into
someone… you don’t hurt anyone…

another challenge: sand- has to be designed for use on beach. Sand gets everywhere… it was
collecting… the throttle triggers, anything with a moving part has to be and proof. The throttle levers
on the handles.. how to make them sand proof… if sand gets in cant control them..

Overcome: first reaction to seal stuff up… we found it much better to let sand in and to have really
big openings for sand to get in and really big opening to get out…. let sand get in there but make
sure no where for them to collect… a process of trial and error.. taking prototype down to beach,
dragging along in sand, throw them around in sea, a lot of that done in Australia…

2. Propulsion System- how to design propulsion system that was efficient but also durable but
really good cooling and wear out and become less efficient… if good propulsion the longer the
battery pack would last… if designed properly and make it low power consumption, can last an
hour instead of 10 minutes…

Early prototypes we did in this 2 yr period, it had propulsion as a motor that was geared. Imagine a
motor that was turning a gearing system… but this was very clumsy and had a belt that wore out… so
big developments was changing the propulsion from a geared system to a direct drive system… this
means less parts, means less to go wrong, means the system is more efficient… turning properly
directly with a motor… on physical parts, everything custom designed… but in terms of the tech…
the batt we use is not off the shelf, but one that has been customer built for our application and size
we need… the control is off the shelf but had to do reprogramming…

(3?)Bespoke battery pack- our batt pack, uses standard Sony cells. But worked with company in
Germany t help us build battery pack customer built to our product… in arrangement that fits
perfectly in our product.. gives us right amount of power and lightweight as they are lithium ion
batteries… rechargeable… not replaceable by us the manufacturers… this is just because we want
to keep it as a sealed product.
Challenges: finding the right parts to fit our design.. battery management system… u have battery,
then management system then balances all the cells which the pack is made up of.. finding
challenge to find battery management system that would fit but also deliver the power that we
needed. Also challenges with amount of power we needed… choosing the right battery cell..
Overcome: buy prototype batteries…. Tries lots of battery packs.. lots of them flooded with water
and died…. Had to try different ones and see which ones work well.