LAKE MAGGIORE, Italy — Maserati’s Trident logo gets three-pronged inspiration from the famous fountain of Neptune in Bologna, where the automaker got its start in 1914 before packing up and moving to Modena. And a logo that denotes mastery over the water is acceptable for the all-electric motorboat that floats us in style around Italy’s Lake Maggiore.
Beckoning dockside, the Tridente is a ten.5-meter superyacht tender, the boat that takes you to an even bigger boat. But it surely’s also advantageous for swanky solo cruises on lakes or ocean coasts, with a roughly 50- to 70-kilometer range (31 to 43 miles).
The design collaboration between Maserati and Vita Power, a marine tech company founded in 2017, contains a fast DC charging system that Vita claims as an industry first. To make that practical, Vita has been creating charging infrastructure in key locales, including along the French Riviera, San Francisco Bay, Recent York and a plug here in Lake Maggiore, about an hour north of Milan.
We hop aboard the Tridente, the aforementioned logo emblazoned on a bow deck formed from ribbed composite. The molto bene motorboat contains a carbon-fiber hull that helps hold a complete weight around 5 tons. As with automobiles, that’s decisively more mass than a comparable ICE-powered boat, due to a 250-kilowatt-hour battery pack that’s sufficiently big to make a Hummer EV blush.
We depart the dock and head for Isola Bella, an island that floats a Seventeenth-century palazzo — a summer home for the aristocratic House of Borromeo, which produced several cardinals and one pope — and a baroque Italian garden of over-the-top splendor. I take a spot on a large, comfortable daybed near the strict, and experience the important thing talking point of any electric watercraft: A welcome lack of diesel or gasoline stink wafting over passengers — notoriously amplified should one experience seasickness — and the flexibility to carry a conversation without shouting over an ear-rending marine ICE powertrain. After all, that also means no rainbow petroleum slicks floating in your wake and despoiling the marine environment.
Our pilot makes sure I’m hanging on before he punches the throttle, backed by a pair of generous screens that display every thing from nav charts to Netflix. Despite its weight, the Tridente proves a punchy beast. A twin-prop arrangement and proprietary control software allows anywhere from 100 to 600 horsepower. Vita Power claims a 10-80% percent charge in lower than an hour at a maximum rate of higher than 200 kilowatts. But even with out a DC charger in port, boats have a built-in advantage over EV cars, via shore power that’s readily accessible in nearly any marina on the earth — and boats that are likely to sit unused for days and even weeks between trips.
The handsome hull cruises smartly at roughly 28 knots, and a maximum 40 knots, potentially outrunning paparazzi en path to a yacht-rocking celebrity lunch in Monaco. The churn of the props dominates the sound, the electrical motors themselves completely undetectable. There’s a swim deck at the strict with a fresh-water shower, dual major chairs that swing around to create a conversation area, a smartly equipped cabin with a bathroom and shower, and a hidden built-in fridge for bubbly or other beverages.
Vita Power is liable for the powertrain design. However the boat itself is definitely the work of Hodgdon Yachts, the Maine builder and tender specialist that’s been around for greater than 200 years, even longer than Maserati. When you’re interested, look ‘em up, and prepare to fork over about $2.7 million. A whole lot of money, but a pittance for folk who can afford the superyacht it attaches to.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
