Leif Stavostrand was born in Canada and grew up in western Norway, where he started messing around with boats at the same time other kids were playing sports. He became passionate about boats, collecting drawings and pictures into scrapbooks. As an adult, he became a sailor, circumnavigating the globe several times.
The birth of his first daughter, in 2012, brought him back ashore, working for Norway’s largest oil-supply base. He rose from base manager to chief operating officer and CEO, all while earning a degree in naval architecture and an MBA.
In 2018, Stavostrand joined his father, Gunnar, at Evoy in the field of electric marine propulsion. Their demo boat, the Evoy1, hit 55 knots in 2019. In 2020, they started delivering Evoy systems to consumers.
Soundings Trade Only caught up with Stavostrand to discuss his background, what’s happening as Evoy moves into the U.S. market, his take on electric-propulsion technology trends, and more. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and space.
Tell us a little about yourself.
My mother’s Canadian, my father’s from Norway, and they ended up coming to Canada for some years. So me and my sister were born in Canada and then eventually moved back. They were into fish-farming back then. We moved back to where my father’s from, a nice, picturesque island on the west side of Norway, surrounded by water. It was just natural to be in boats from a very young age.
That led me into a maritime career. I’ve been all over the world as a merchant navy officer. I’ve done all the steps, all the way from washing toilets to third officer, second officer, first officer and sea captain. Underway, I also added naval architecture and one year of electrical training. All these interests kind of culminated into wanting to do something around electric boating.
How did your electric-boating ideas first take shape?
My father and I co-founded a company, maybe 20 years ago. And then we realized that the potential of building the propulsion system itself was a lot greater than building the boat. That led into Evoy. I was CEO of a large oil supply base at the time. I’ve had this burning interest and rather large concern about global warming, and I was thinking about how I could contribute to solving that problem. I think with my background, this is probably the best that I could do with my knowledge and lifetime. I want to at least do a tiny bit of a share on trying to make things better going forward. That was a big motivation for me.
How did you get Evoy up and running?
There’s a million things. Starting a company is quite complex. I got an MBA to learn more about how to go about it. I did a training course with MIT for learning how to start companies. You try to go about it structurally — putting together a team, getting funding. I’ve spent enormous amounts of my capacity on raising capital. That’s been one of the biggest jobs. We also knew that it was crucial to get a working prototype on the water, so we did that in a year.
That seems pretty fast.
Yeah, and it was also the fastest electric boat worldwide at that point. It did 55 knots, which we were quite proud of.
How long was that boat?
It’s a 9-meter [30-foot] boat. It was more than three tons. We put quite a bit of power into that.
What was the first motor that you used on that prototype?
That motor was 400 hp, but we’ve managed to take out closer to 800 hp from that motor. It’s a small thing that’s just 150 kilos, about 300 pounds, and that’s what we could take out from it. So that was quite impressive.
You’ve stayed in that upper-horsepower range for inboards and outboards. Why?
Some companies will tell you that they aim for low voltage and low output because that’s where they sell the most units. But that also comes with some challenges. First of all, there’s huge competition in that area, and if you read the reports from a lot of these OEMs, they’re not really making money on the low-output motors because the competition is so big. Secondly, I think it was important to show the market that it’s not just quiet and environmentally friendly. It can also be quite exciting to put more power on it. And honestly, we saw a gap in the market, too. There wasn’t really anyone addressing the high-output side of things.
Your competitors that I know the most about are Flux and Vision.
There’s not that many others. It’s tough to open up new markets. We’ve been a bit lucky since we’re in Europe, where a lot of commercial customers want or have to go electric. And of course, having the 300 hp, this boat goes fast any day. It’s just that user experience. You have to meet people that are excited about the product to get it sold. It’s not enough that it’s just OK. It needs to be good.
Why does today’s battery technology keep holding electric boats back?
Our energy density today is on par with a lot of the best in the car industry. In the last two years, we’ve talked to 120 different battery suppliers around the globe, so we’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s moving. What’s been really interesting for me to learn is that because the battery industry is ruled by five really big companies, they are very careful with letting out too much good stuff too soon. You can compare it to cellphones, laptops, iPads, whatever, where things are getting quite mature. There’s only incremental changes coming, and I think we all see the same in the battery industry.
You can read articles daily about some university, some startup that has some super batteries, but the fact is, building a battery factory or commercializing battery cells is immensely expensive, and it’s really, really hard to do.
I think it’s going to be the big battery suppliers that are going to drive the pricing and industry. And for those that are working on very promising battery technology, it’s going to be hard to take it to market.
Which types of battery technology are you watching closely?
Solid-state looks really interesting. What they call LFP batteries are getting into more and more cars. But we don’t think there will be a big shift. It’s probably going to be more like 5% to 10% incremental improvements per year, either in energy density or price. It can be either, but usually not at the same time.
Maybe somebody has an iPhone moment, comes up with something and manages to do something that we can’t see today. We don’t rule it out. That’s why we’re also battery-supplier agnostic, where we can connect any battery to our system.
Where is most of the battery manufacturing happening?
About 80% of our suppliers today are in Europe, but we have global suppliers from Asia, the U.S., South America, all over the place — wherever we can find the best products. And then as our design matures, as it does every day, we’re always considering tipping points when it makes sense for us to bring production to ourselves, or outsource some production to bring costs down. Trying to find that balance is difficult, but also possible and important for us.
How many employees do you have, and what’s your worldwide facility footprint?
We actually did a merger with a company called Vita this summer. So between us two, I think we’re around 80 employees now. We would love to be double or triple that, but you always have to adapt your cost to your wallet and the market around you. We have a footprint now in Norway, France, Italy, the U.K., the U.S. and Canada.
Is Europe your biggest market?
It was until recently. I would say our biggest sales now are actually in the U.S. California is doing a lot of our sales right now, mostly commercial. Our hypothesis was that commercial had return on investment — probably more grants would go in that direction, and also some of them are forced to go electric. Some harbors are getting closed; some lakes are getting closed. Where they actually have to go electric, where they use their boats hundreds of hours, sometimes thousands per year, they can defend the higher up-front cost.
That’s a hard sell to the recreational boats. But as we build volume, standardize our products — which we work hard on every day — there’s a nice cost-down curve. That means that over time, not tomorrow, but over time we’ll open up to more and more people on the recreational side.
You’re also collaborating with Axopar, is that right?
Axopar has been just fantastic for us. They very early understood and still see that everything is going to electrify at some point. It’s going to take decades, especially in places like Miami, but we see it very clearly in the car industry. It’s now a momentum that’s starting to self-propel, and it’s different all over the place, different states and countries. But what seems fairly clear is that this momentum is not going to stop because the product is inherently better. It’s more expensive, and the range today is less than what you get from budget engines, but it’s a nicer ride. And just because of the simplicity around electricity and electric motors, it will also become cheaper over time.
Some people don’t realize that electric eliminates oil changes, purchasing gasoline.
Exactly. It’s very basic maintenance. We’re not claiming that electric is something for everyone today. It’s not. But it works when people are honest with themselves, how they use their boats, both in commercial and recreational, a lot of people get some “aha experiences.”
Offshore fishing is not going to go electric anytime soon, for sure. And there’s other things that just don’t work, but when we see so many use cases that are covered by electric today, the main obstacle in many ways in the recreational market is the cost. That will come down.
The dayboat model is a pretty good one for electrification.
Yeah. And a lot of people come to us with their worst-case scenario, and we’re like, “Come on, you know the system.” But most best-case scenarios are really, really good. The user experience is also kind of next level, and that’s something that a lot of people appreciate.
Here in the United States, things that are affecting the trade are inflation, high interest rates. What headwinds are you seeing in Norway?
It’s all the same. It’s globalized. It’s not easy in that respect, but I’ve talked to a few of the other leading companies within maritime electrification, and they see the same thing that we see: We haven’t seen the downturn on the electric that we’ve seen in internal combustion the last few years, especially the last two years.
Obviously with electric, there’s a lot of innovation involved. How do you build that mindset into the culture at Evoy?
It’s something that has to be worked with every day. Of course the culture is, like you say, in certain ways inherent, but it’s something that we talk about quite a bit. How we can keep innovating? And it’s hard, actually. It’s hard to keep that going at the same time as you have cost-down focus, customer-experience focus, but it all hangs together. So I think it’s something handled fairly well from the team that we have.
There was recent flooding in Asheville, North Carolina, and electric cars caught on fire. What do you do on the marine side to protect the motor?
Both ourselves and our partners and suppliers, that’s a very heavy focus point. The first level of safety is just to make sure that you have the IP water-ingress protection. And then it’s all about the cables, a lot of connectivity. You have to have fairly detailed focus around how all these things are designed, so that you secure them safely.
The heavy-duty, expensive components are all IP67 or more. It doesn’t mean that we encourage you to use your boat as a submarine, but if you are unlucky and your boat is submerged, in most cases it’s something that can be salvaged. All our boats are connected 24/7, so we can go through and run diagnostics and make sure everything is working the way it’s supposed to work. But all in all, it’s not much different from a diesel or a gasoline engine. You don’t want to submerge those, either.
Is it mostly range, then, that holds people back from adopting electric boats?
Of course there’s the range thing. There’s price, which is an obstacle for a lot of people. But then you have the neighbor effect. There’s been a lot of studies about electric cars. When a market or a segment reaches a 5% level, that’s when they call it the tipping point.v Until you reach that 5%, there’s first movers and innovators that dare to take the first step. They want to be at the pinnacle of where technology is. They want to try new stuff. They want to see what’s working. They want to show their neighbors.
Is there anything else Soundings Trade Only readers should know about electrification or Evoy?
There have been stories about various companies that have tried electric in the U.S., and they’ve had technical issues. We wanted to make sure that we had enough proof points, enough experience to be self-confident around a mature product that we know will work. That was really important for us coming into the U.S., and we’re going to build on that going forward.
For us, it’s super-exciting to be in the U.S. It’s the largest boating market in the world by far. Nothing else is close. But we also realize that each state, each region has their own thing. So far, feedback on the lakes looks really, really strong. And then there’s pockets here and there of ports and marinas and harbors that are more forward-leaning than others. And there are grants we see coming in now, in different areas, that are going to open up a lot.
