Q&A with Gavin Wesson

Seven-year-old Charles Good was fueling the outboard on the tender for his parents’ boat when a fire erupted. The youngster wasn’t hurt, but the blaze destroyed both vessels, and the experience had a lasting impact on Good.

“From an early point, he was trying to come up with a safer alternative to gasoline,” says Gavin Wesson, CEO of Cox Powertrain, which makes a 300-hp diesel outboard, the CXO300.

Good built a successful career in finance, but he was always on the lookout for a way to improve vessel safety. In 2008, he met David Cox, whom Wesson calls a “serial inventor.” Cox worked primarily in the automotive and Formula 1 racing worlds. He had also developed a lightweight, opposed-piston diesel engine concept that needed the right application.

The two partnered, and Good hired a small team of engineers to further develop the concept. By 2019, Cox Powertrain had evolved the vertical crankshaft and opposing piston concept to a V-8 diesel outboard. The 4.4-liter aluminum powerhead has common-rail fuel injection, an engine-management module that eliminates fuses and relays, and universal mounting holes. The engine is available in two gear ratios and three shaft lengths, and is designed to mount on centers similar to conventional gas outboards. It delivers 479 foot-pounds of torque, which Cox Powertrain says is more than gas outboards rated at 425 hp. The name Cox was retained to honor the engine’s inventor, who has since died.

Soundings Trade Only recently caught up with Wesson, who joined the company’s executive team in 2021. It’s been an eventful couple of years for for the 49-year-old, who married his wife, Julianna, in summer 2022. Their permanent residence is in Leeds, England, about 250 miles north of Shoreham-by-Sea, where Cox Powertrain is located.

What is the current status of Cox Powertrain? Are engines in production?

We first qualified the CXO300 in July 2020 for the EPA, IMO and all the required certifications, and produced a small amount of engines over the following 12 months. We then took time out to learn from all the feedback we got from the first batch to improve the engines further. We launched in real volume in the second half of 2022 and started supplying engines to our global distributor base. We have 30 distributors covering the planet, and there are few areas where we don’t have distribution capability.

What is your boating background?

That’s a relatively short story. My background isn’t in the marine side at all, from a personal or professional perspective. I’ve only been on boats since I started at Cox, but during my honeymoon, I found myself looking at what was on the back of boats on [Italy’s] Lake Como.

How about your professional experience?

My last 30 years have been in the aerospace business. I started out as a mechanical engineer, and I’ve always had a love for things that go fast: aircraft, jet engines. I like fast cars, and that kid still lives inside me. I started out with aerospace in companies small and large, and I’ve always been around propulsion systems. Most recently, I was an executive at GKN Aerospace, a first-tier supplier to all the major players in aerospace, including names like Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin. I spent 10 years there, and I learned and experienced a great deal.

How did you wind up at Cox?

I have had this yearning to get into an organization early and share in its learning, its growing and its future, and do something rather special and unique. In early 2021, a recruitment agent working on behalf of the executive team at Cox explained the opportunity to me and asked me if I’d be interested. I said, “Absolutely. It sounds like an exciting venture, and I’d like to find out more.” That was it. I met with the then-chairman, Charles Good, who founded the business, and the executive team. From that point, I was hooked. I’ve never looked back.

Why did the company go with a 300-hp engine, rather than starting smaller and working up?

The challenge for the diesel has always been, how do you get the weight and size and power into that envelope for an outboard with a vertical crankshaft? If you look at where to place a diesel engine with some of those spatial challenges as you go up in horsepower, some of the differentiators become less. If you look at the initial strategy of Cox, it was to have a strong pull and demand fed through the commercial markets. When you look at the commercial side, 300 was assessed as a sweet spot for the application.

Did the industry need to see demand for large gasoline outboards before realizing what a diesel version could offer?

If you look at all the market data, that’s the direction the market is taking quite clearly. If you look at the U.S., there’s a 17% compound annual growth rate on 200-hp-and-above outboard engines. The cool thing about Cox is that comparing the CXO300 to a 300-hp gasoline outboard is not a like-to-like comparison. The 479 foot-pounds of torque are more comparable to a 400- or 425-hp engine.

What are the primary benefits of a diesel outboard over gasoline?

It started as a safety case, and I think diesel availability in places like Asia is a key benefit, but there are two key drivers for me. One is that it addresses the environmental benefit. We quote 30% reduced emissions as a minimum, but I think we’re going to see better than that. We’ve seen better than that in testing. The other is cost of ownership in terms of range, fuel cost and service. We’re servicing at 250 hours instead of every 100, and our life-of-product is so robust. We have commercial vessel owners saving $100,000 per year in fuel costs.

Did Cox start from scratch for the CXO300, or is it an adaptation of an automotive engine?

This is designed specifically for marine use from a blank sheet of paper. When you take an automotive engine, it’s not meant for marine use. The horizontal crank gives you a width issue. The whole approach with Cox was that we wanted a diesel engine, but it had to fit the envelope within a cowling structure of a gasoline equivalent. We designed a powerhead from the ground up. We designed the block with our casting suppliers. We designed the crank, the cooling system. This is purpose-built for a marine application.

Did Cox design its own lower unit/gearcase as well?

We designed our own transmission and lower unit so we can manage the torque. It consists of parts found in the supply chain, but we designed it, and we assemble everything here on-site. Our transmission is very simple, but it’s built with beefed-up components to deal with the torque. We have patents around the transmission and leg, but the majority of our patents are in the powerhead.

What is the maximum rpm of the CXO300?

The other area where automotive engines will struggle is power usage. Marine is high power for long hours, while automotive is low power and rarely at full revs. The high end of our revs is 3,500 to 4,000. We’re not into that 5,000- or 6,000-rpm range, and we are built to be able to run high power for long periods of time.

How do you determine the propellers for a given application?

We have some recommendation in our literature, but we’ve found that people have their own preferences, so we let the distributors make the call on propellers. We are working with a couple propeller manufacturers, but we basically make the prop-shaft splines to work with a wide range of propellers.

How important was it to become EPA Tier 3, RCD II and IMO Tier II certified?

One of our goals was to significantly reduce emissions and lower the cost of ownership for our customers. We aren’t just meeting those requirements; we are well within. For example, we are around 56% of the total allowance for IMO Tier II.

Are there any other engines or products on the drawing board?

We are perfecting the 300, and we’re happy with the feedback we’re getting from the early adopters using our products. We have more than 100 vessels in service on the water in recreational, governmental and commercial use today. There’s a few improvements we want to make, so we’ll do that in the next 12 months, and we’re looking at the horizons for product development and technology. Over the next five years, we have a portfolio planned where we’re going to bring more product to the market and start working through which technology we can use as well, especially with pressures around carbon fuels. We have more products in the hopper, and our intention is to grow a range of horsepower over the coming three to five years.

Of the units you have out there now, what percentage are commercial, governmental and recreational?

We’re about 60% commercial, governmental is 25%, and the remainder is recreational. The commercial users are jumping to the solution just because of instant payback in costs that they see.

How is expanding your presence in North America going, and where else are you targeting growth?

It’s a really important market for us. We have five distributors in the United States plus one in Canada and one in Panama, covering South America. We’ve spent much time with our distributors helping them establish their dealer network, and we’ve spent time expanding our own presence. We have a small team under Doug Ross, who is the regional director. We have distributors that we train how to service our product.

Are there any plans for a dealer network?

We have 30 distributors who have dealership networks. They store our products, including spares and rigging, and they’ll have that in-region, so the dealerships have quick access to the materials and capability.

Who are some of your partners in the OEM boatbuilding space, recreational and commercial?

Early adopters have included Weeks Marine in Louisiana. On the governmental side, we’re testing with MARTAC in the United States, the Philippine Navy, the Australian Department of Defence. On the recreational side, we worked with Pursuit, Axopar and some other brands you would recognize.

How are you servicing these engines, and how are you getting techs up to speed on working with them?

Over the course of the second half of last year, we moved many of our resources from validation and testing to service.
We have a bunch of guys who’ve grown up making the engines, and testing and validating, and they’ve moved to our after-sales area. We developed an after-sales team with technical knowledge. There’s a tech line here in Shoreham, and we can service engines here, but we have people who travel throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia supporting the distributors. For example, in the U.S., we had all of our distributors go to workshops at Ring Power in Florida for service training. We do regular events with the distributors, and they pass that on to the service personnel.

What size is your facility in Shoreham-by-the-Sea, and what is dedicated to engineering and R&D?

We have 28,000 square feet and have a smaller 15,0000-square-foot R&D facility. One of the things I liked when I joined the business is that we have great investors who have done things properly. You walk through and see a line setup that is state of the art. We have a powerhead line, a transmission line. It’s more like an automotive system when you see it. Engineering systems are electronic, and the tools can talk to each other. We test every powerhead and have R&D, tech development, and we’re improving our products in a controlled environment.

How many employees does Cox have?

We have 150 employees and 50 engineers on-site. Five or six are research and design.

What does Cox do to inspire innovation? What makes the company a great place to work?

Innovation is the core of what we do. We have our dedicated R&D team working on future technology. Once a month or every other month, we tell the engineering team, “Go work on whatever you want. Go innovate on a problem or find a solution for something that’s been bothering you, and it can be technical or entrepreneurial.” They take it, and their job is to find a solution within 24 hours.

What have they come back with?

One worked on ways to smooth out how we shift gears. Another looked at engine management and how to reduce the number of silicon chips we needed. One said, “What happens if we cut a V-8 in half and make it a V-4?” There are no crazy ideas. Whatever they come up with, we tell them to put it out there.

Do you see zero-carbon fuels like hydrogen and ammonia gas being integrated into Cox outboards?

We went to Coniston Records Week [an annual powerboating event sanctioned by the Union Internationale Motonautique held on Coniston Water in Cumbria, United Kingdom Oct. 31-Nov. 4, 2022]. The boat was a 21-foot Hallett Vector named Pegasus. It was a tiny little thing. It looked like an engine with a boat strapped to it. Driver Adam Brown hit the diesel outboard speed record with a single-engine boat, topping it four times, eventually clocking 62.27 mph. We did it with diesel the first time, and then we did it with hydrotreated vegetable oil.

What is Cox doing to make its products and operations sustainable?

We have a program of how we take the carbon and emissions away from our product, and we’re looking at HVO, which is a 94% reduction in CO₂ compared to gasoline. If you look at the fuel range, we have the widest you can select. We’re looking at the alternative fuels of the future. We have a hydrogen-diesel hybrid, and we’re looking at things like ammonia. We’re looking at it from an application point of view, but what’s important is where we look at the infrastructure and storage capability. There’s an application aspect, and there’s looking at what the globe is looking at.

So there’s more to it than if the engine can run on the fuel?

The biggest issue becomes storage and availability. The key is: How do you get fuel storage on board? With hydrogen, is it gas? Is it liquid? Is it pressurized? What are the container requirements? How much can you store?

Who are your competitors in this space?

We see other diesel solutions in the market as being a good thing. OXE and Neander being in the market are proving out that diesel is a solution.

Where is Cox Powertrain headed? Will we see bigger engines?

We’re following the market and seeing where the market is going. Mercury and Yamaha inspire us to be better, but there’s also the inboards, as well. Especially with the torque we generate, we’re looking at inboard builders, as well. Much of that is leading north in the horsepower range, bigger boats, more outboards. 

This article was originally published in the February 2023 issue.