July 11, 2023

The two hottest days on record globally, happened last week and with record heat, torrential rains and flooding in some places, and all the other alarming environmental news we are hearing these days, I want to share my sense of relief at the progress being made in the trucking industry.

In the July/August Car & Driver magazine, Jonathan Ramsey wrote a brief piece about big rigs and the energy transition. Class 8 trucks are the big long haul highway trucks that are used all over the world for delivering big cargo. We are seeing significant environmental progress there. It’s an important category. 

In his article, Ramsey writes that in 2021, the roughly 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S.  discharged nearly 1.05 billion tons of greenhouse gasses that year. He compares that with the 22.8 million medium and heavy-duty trucks emitting 417.1 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses in the same timeframe. So, in the U.S., 8.4 % of vehicles produced 28.5 % of the greenhouse gasses.

Many governments and major truck manufacturers are working flat-out to get these numbers down. Here is why the boat business should feel good about this.

Since the historical start of the internal combustion engine in the early 1900s, boat engines have usually been adapted for marine applications from some other, larger use like cars and trucks. Both Volvo and Hyundai are examples of engine builders who are now moving to “alt-fuel” where a diesel engine can switch to run on hydrogen, greatly reducing the emissions. That sort of technology may help keep big pleasure craft in the market in the future.

Pure electric trucks are coming fast as well. Amazon operates a huge fleet of vehicles and for short haul city deliveries, pure electric can work.  Amazon began rolling out its custom electric delivery vans from upstart manufacturer Rivian in the U.S. last summer and already has more than 3,000 vans delivering packages in over 500 U.S. cities and regions. The company aims to have 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian on the road globally by 2030, helping to save millions of metric tons of carbon per year.

In the boat business, Canada is looking like an electric leader with Vision Marine Technologies gaining contracts to supply their engines to companies like Four Winns and the up-start PWC builder Taiga getting into the market.

Later this week, the Canadian Yachting / Boating Industry Canada editorial team will be meeting with the Taiga people to actually ride and review their new electric PWC. This could be the start of a wave of electric boats and watercraft that we think, could sweep through cottage country in the coming years.

Look for our report in next week’s Boating Industry Canada News Week Digest!

Andy Adams – Editor