ePropulsion Spirit 1.0 – the most popular outboard for small craft
Since its launch a few years ago the ePropulsion Spirit 1.0 electric outboard has quickly grown to become the most popular electric outboard motor in Australia. Owners of dinghies, tinnies inflatables and small sailing boats around the country realise that it’s so much easier to use than a petrol outboard and that it’s the best quality and best value-for-money electric outboard motor in its class. When compared to other brands, it consistently comes out on top. What makes this electric outboard so popular?
For starters, the motor is a ‘direct drive’ system, meaning there is no gearbox so it’s completely silent in operation and there’s less moving parts to break down. The battery is the largest in its class and has an in-built air pocket, so if you accidentally drop it in the water – it floats! It offers a whopping 1276Wh of energy capacity, this translates to typically between 3 to 5 hours of run time on most small boats, at reasonable cruising speeds of between 3 to 4 knots. At rowing speed you could squeeze over 30hrs of run time from a single battery charge. The motor gives an equivalent performance to a 3hp petrol outboard, so it’s powerful enough to punch through chop, headwinds and some tidal currents. Its large diameter, high pitched propeller rotates relatively slowly at 1200 RPM giving it very high thrust so the outboards will push boats up to 1500kg. Many of our clients use the Spirit outboard on trailer sailers and small yachts.
The ePropulsion Spirit outboard has sacrificial anodes fitted to the transom bracket and on top of the propeller nut. The areas where stainless touches aluminium are potted with silicon to exclude saltwater and oxygen to prevent corrosion. The battery charger puts out 180W which is double that of most comparable electric outboards in its class, resulting in a charge time from empty to full of about 7 hours. There is even a fast charger available which puts out 520 watts, reducing the charge time further to only 3 hours from empty to full. Spare parts such as propellers and anodes are less than half the price of many competing products.
The Spirit 1.0 outboard comes in 2 versions, the ‘Plus’ and ‘EVO’ model. The ‘Plus’ is the standard basic version and is available in Long, Short and Extra Short shafts, the latter being the most popular choice for dinghies and small inflatables.
The ‘EVO’ model is in terms of the motor and power output identical to the ‘Plus’ but has a few differences:
-the tiller arm is removable and it can be operated from a top-mount or side-mount remote throttle (the ‘Plus’ has a non-removable tiller, that can be folded down for easy transport)
-it comes with a bluetooth wristband that acts as a ‘man-overboard’ safety kill switch (The ‘Plus’ has a more conventional magnetic killswitch that slots onto the tiller arm
-it has ‘regeneration capacity’ meaning that if you pull the propeller through the water (eg on a sailboat or when towing) the propeller will start freewheeling through the water and it will trickle-charge some energy back into the battery
The ‘EVO’ model is available in Long or Short version (not XS)
To learn more about the ePropulsion Spirit 1.0 ‘Plus’ and ‘EVO’ outboard models, please see here