If you look at the offerings from established electric outboard manufacturers, you notice that they look broadly similar to conventional petrol powered outboard engines.
There’s a vaguely rectangular box on the top, a shaft going down with a propeller on it and a tiller arm sticking out to steer and control it.
That seems perfectly logical until you consider that what’s actually in that rectangular bit of a conventional outboard is a petrol engine and a petrol tank.
But there’s no tank on an electric outboard. And there’s no petrol engine either. And isn’t that sticky out tiller arm thing a bit inconvenient when you’re not using it?
Clearly TEMO thought the same, which is why the TEMO-1000 looks like it’s from the future!
Due to be launched next year, priced at €2,850, the TEMO-1000 has no such rectangular box on top, just a rudder-shaped shaft with an electric motor at the bottom and a long slim battery that simply slides down into it, connecting automatically to your electric boat without having to plug wires into it.
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The tiller arm does the same, meaning it disappears completely when not in use and yet it is never detached and therefore never mislaid. It’s also finished in a satin blue because it turns out that outboards don’t need to be grey, black or white. Who knew?
There’s more. My tender is about as long as my boat is wide, so when it’s on the bathing platform, the outboard has to come off, otherwise it simply sticks out when tilted.
This one tilts to 90 degrees and then rotates as far as you want so that it rests in or across the tender when not in use, without having to detach it.
This also allows you to fit the motor while keeping it safely inside the boat before swivelling it into place. You can even alter the depth of the shaft in the run position, meaning it can be both long or short shaft, depending on how high you set it.
It’s 100% waterproof, it has a 1,000-watt motor (equivalent to about 3hp) and it’s capable of powering boats of up to about a tonne in weight. That makes it ideal for a tender with up to six people in it or a small low-speed motorboat of up to about 8m. Yet it weighs just 15kg including the 5kg battery.
TEMO reckons you’ll get about 45 minutes running at full power in electric boat mode. It then takes about 5.5 hours to fully recharge but of course it’s quick and easy to swap the battery for a fresh one.
