The super-rich have it pretty tough these days, what with the desire to spend their bajillions but social pressures to be responsible and not throw their money around too much leaves many of them playing the full-on “angel and devil” routine from the old Tom & Jerry show. The answer, for many, has been to spend conspicuously on things like green homes, green luxury cars, and now, green mega-yachts.
That boat up there is the EMax Excalibur Hybrid, and its builders want you to know it’s “green” so bad that they’ve bedazzled it with thousands of highly-reflective (read: shiny) solar panels sure to split their time feeding into the ship’s massive electrical systems and searing the retinas of anyone unlucky enough to be caught staring directly into the ship’s bow when the sun hits at the wrong angle ... or the right angle, I guess - depends on who you’re trying to blind, right?
Back to ship: the Excalibur was drawn up by Sauter Carbon Offset Design and is set to be constructed by the Ned Ship Group. According to Richard Sauter (eponymous head of Sauter Carbon Offset Design) “the plug-in Emax Excalibur has a top speed of 30 knots and can harvest enough energy per year to offset up to 3,000 nautical miles of carbon-neutral cruising at 18 knots.” The ship also “features EnergyStar appliances, air conditioning, and refrigeration ... to go with its state-of-the-art diesel hybrid engines.”
Sauter has yet to release pricing on the EMax, and has yet to address why someone who was actually interested in conservation and renewable energy would choose this diesel-powered eyesore over a sailing yacht. Of course it isn’t the only “carbon neutral” floating monolith of excess, as we have covered both the Ocean Empire LSV and hydrogen-powered Ekranoyacht concept...both of which have about the same odds of making it into production as the EMax. That is to say, almost zero. Though in fairness to the whole excess in boating theme, a 100 percent solar-powered ship recently completed a journey across the Atlantic. So maybe, one day, we will see some truly carbon neutral ships floating our planet’s oceans. But they probably won’t be luxury yachts.
Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0