Pioneer Solar-Electric Catamaran
Porsche, Ferrari, and Rolls-Royce have all launched their first fully electric models over the past few years, but luxury yachting has been slower to follow, because pushing a hull through water takes far more energy than rolling a car down a highway. Mike Frank, who spent two decades building solar power plants in Germany, started a shipyard to build a boat that could close that gap. The result is Pioneer One, the first hull of Pioneer Yachts' PY60: a 60-foot catamaran built in Stralsund with a roof and bimini covered in 16.7 kilowatts of solar panels, feeding a 48-volt battery bank sized between 187 and 246 kilowatt-hours. That's enough to cruise at 7.5 knots and hit 11 knots at full tilt on electric power alone, with onboard diesel generators standing by only when the sun and batteries fall short. The standout design touch is what Pioneer calls the largest cockpit door in its class, merging the aft deck and salon into one open room, while a joystick docking system lets an owner run the boat without hiring a professional crew. Frank isn't handing Pioneer One to a customer first: he's keeping it as his own boat, logging real sailing data to inform future hulls.
