Electric boat startup Navier has landed the first official pilot program for its hydrofoil, partnering with Stripe to bring passengers from San Francisco’s suburbs to downtown.
Stripe will pay Navier to move the employees from Larkspur, where a number of them are based, to its office near Oyster Point. An hour drive at the best of times, and right through central SF, it’s not a pleasant drive. Half an hour by boat – especially an electric hydrofoil, which in my experience is a pretty smooth, quiet ride – would be infinitely preferable.
Navier’s six-passenger N30, which makes its official debut in 2022 after an accelerated development period, isn’t going to make much of a dent in traffic on its own, of course. Even if the company adds the five to seven more ships it plans as they are built, those are just a handful of off-road cars.
But as a pilot program, the intention is not to operate at scale, but to identify the means and barriers to that scale. Navier has been shopping around the West Coast for a good place to do this, and it looks like Stripe and the Bay Area made the best case.
“Over the coming months, our aim is to identify the most critical commuting routes from Oyster Point and gain insight into commuter behaviour. This will help us optimize our services to ease traffic congestion in coastal cities while addressing issues like pollution and lost working hours,” said founder and CEO Sampriti Bhattacharyya. “In addition, our pilot program will play a key role in improving our embedded systems, including automatic collision detection and autonomous navigation technologies.”
These will be increasingly useful as Navier pursues larger boats, such as the 30-passenger model they are developing. While fully autonomous boats are still a long way off (though perhaps closer than cars), a 30-passenger ferry operated by a single person instead of three and powered by electricity represents huge potential savings for the companies that already operate them timetables. But trust needs to be built around systems like automatic login, animal detection and so on.
The cockpit of the Navier N30. Image Credits: Navier
Other commuting-challenged coastal cities may take note if the pilot goes well. Certainly in my own Seattle environs, the traffic between certain parts of the city (and a newly revealed waterfront) suggests that a renewed focus on maritime transit may not be far off.
“Our initiative is focused on turning these journeys into seamless, efficient and enjoyable experiences,” said Bhattacharyya. “We present a water transport service equipped with amenities that enhance productivity on the go, such as desks and Wi-Fi. This service aims to encourage commuters to switch from individual car journeys to a more enjoyable, productive and zero-emissions alternative.”
