Princeton University’s Electric Speedboat team just broke the world water speed record for an electric-powered boat on the American Power Boat Association’s sanctioned kilo course on Lake Townsend in North Carolina.
The team, made up of more than 40 students from New Jersey’s Princeton University, obliterated the previous official record of 88.61 mph established by Jaguar-Vector’s race boat in 2018.
The team launched their boat, nicknamed Big Bird, with a 200 HP electric race motor in picture-perfect conditions and a backdrop of autumn colors. On the first pass, driver John Peeters posted a single direction speed of 111.08 mph. Without recharging the boat’s batteries (as is required of a kilo-style event), he then increased his speed in the opposite direction, recording an average speed of 117.50 mph. The two speeds averaged together for the new world record of 114.20 mph.
“We came together as a team with a dream. Today, hard work and ingenuity brought this dream into a reality,” said Peeters. “Rarely can one say: we are the greatest or best, but today we can. Fastest electric boat ever.”
The team clearly demonstrated that electric power is progressing significantly in an event that first caught the world's imagination in the 1960s with Donald Campbell's gas turbine-powered Bluebird. The current water speed record is 317.59 mph, achieved by Australian Ken Warby in the Spirit of Australia in 1978. No doubt, some day in the not too distant future, electric power will capture that record too.
In the meantime, hats off to the Princeton team!