By Tom Grünweg Electric boats, as any visitor to Königsee lake
in Bavaria knows, are both old-fashioned and silent: Tour boats
with electric motors have glided like swans across the icy lake
since the turn of the century. Navies have also experimented
with battery-powered submarines since before World War I. But
the technology has taken a long time to become a significant
factor in the commercial boating sector. Now, says Markus
Boesch, junior manager at the Boesch shipyard in Zürich, "seeing
an electric boat out on a lake isn't as rare as it once was." In
particular, he means Boesch speed boats on Zürich Lake. The
Swiss may not be the only or even the biggest manufacturers of
water-compatible electric vehicles, but most other battery-
powered boats are nothing more than "lame barges," Boesch says.
His firm's wooden boats, on the other hand, are modeled after
classic Riva speedboats from Italy. "We offer the first non-
custom boat ever to reach a plane with an electric motor,"
Boesch says. The 80 kilowatt-stron