Startups Transforming Pleasure Boating Draw Investor Interest

“This is one of those pretty obvious ideas,” says cofounder and CEO Mitch Lee of his year-old startup’s work on electrifying pleasure boats. Arc Boat Co.’s first design, a pre-production model named the Arc One, recently hit the water for a day of testing. Lee travelled with the team building the vessel to Lake Arrowhead, about an hour-and-a-half east of Los Angeles, Arc’s home base. The lake run along with other testing last fall and this winter have informed a handful of specification changes — “in a good way,” according to Arc — from those we reported on in November. The 220 kWh battery size, for example, has increased by 10%, nearly three times the capacity of a Tesla Model Y.

$30m Arc’s latest investment round, led by Eclipse Ventures, which has also invested in electric aircraft