Electrifying the marine industry with zero emissions
Arc uses Siemens Xcelerator to disrupt recreation and commercial marine and provide an outstanding user experience
Founded in 2021, Arc is a venture-backed startup on a mission to electrify the marine industry. Arc designs, manufactures and distributes high-performance, fully electric boats at its headquarters in Los Angeles, California. They create everything in house, including battery packs, powertrain systems, thermal control systems and software. The company’s first product, the Arc One, sold out its initial production run and the next generation, Arc Sport, a 500 horsepower (hp) all-electric wake boat, is taking the wake boat industry by storm.
The Arc Sport was designed and built from a clean sheet to deliver the thrill of high torque (double that of gas-powered alternatives) and all-electric, high-performant wakesurfing with zero emissions. It was built with a combination of aerospace engineering and electric vehicle (EV) technology and can be customized for performance with a powerful combination of leading-edge hardware and software control.
Arc adopts Siemens tools early on
During Arc’s formative years, the team evaluated the market for its chosen set of product development tools. The founders knew Siemens Digital Industries Software’s NX™ software for Startups program would provide the right toolset for the team’s needs with the flexibility to expand its capabilities as the company evolved. As Ryan Cook, cofounder and chief technical technology officer (CTO) at Arc explains, “We found the NX for Startups package appealing. It obviously worked exactly as intended, the price was good, and we thought if this is going to be our long-term software, we might as well just start with it so we don’t have to migrate later.”
During their early days, the team adopted a rapid iterative approach to product development and testing more commonly found in the consumer product industry. The team rapidly iterated the design around its mission to deliver electric power in a world dominated by gasoline-powered vehicles. “Our competitors, the gas-powered boat companies, have been doing this for decades and they’re iterating on their products every model year, tweaking things and gradually getting to where they are today,” says Cook. “We didn’t have that time, so we had to iterate very quickly.”
The ability to build complex parameterized models in NX enabled Arc to develop adaptable parametric 3D models that supported its rapid iteration design, build, test and redesign process.
“There’s a lot of parameters involved in hull design – deadrise, beam at chine, keel angle, etc. – so we used NX to parameterize them all. With our fully parametric hull model, we would build one boat, gauge performance, collect data and tweak one or two parameters and then build a second boat based on what we learned.” Arc adopted aluminum hulls for the Arc One, which also supported the rapid build and test approach during the early stages of product development.
Growing sophistication calls for an expanded toolset
Once the Arc One was delivered to market, the company looked to its next-generation boat, the Arc Sport. Moving from aluminium to composite hulls brought fresh challenges, which the company used the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services to overcome.
“Fast forward to today and we’re even more sophisticated because we know the performance characteristics we want out of the vehicle,” says Cook. “With a given center of gravity and the type of shape we want to go with, we can do it in one shot with NX.”
With a given center of gravity and the type of shape we want to go with, we can do it in one shot with NX.
Ryan Cook, cofounder and chief technology officer, Arc
Arc takes advantage of the powerful 3D shape modeling and product engineering capabilities in NX to not only design the product but also support data for manufacturing – whether exporting surfaces for local contractors, manufacturing parts or building in house. While developing the Arc Sport, the team adopted Teamcenter® software for product lifecycle management (PLM) to optimize its product and production data management as the complexity of both its product and supply chain increased.
Using simulation to solve the challenges of electrification
Although the design of gas-powered boats is a long-established process with known variables and requirements, Arc’s focus on electric propulsion brings new challenges and this is where the team’s use of Siemens’ simulation technologies started to pay dividends. As Cook explains, “One of the key problems to solve is that a battery pack is very heavy and affects the boat in two main ways – mass and center of gravity.”
To achieve the mass goals and account for the battery pack weight, everything on the boat needs to be substantially lighter. This is partially solved by adopting an alternative composite manufacturing process called vacuum resin infusion, to deliver better material properties at lower mass compared to traditional composite layup methods.
To support the use of this alternative production process and to make parts lighter, the team uses Simcenter™ Femap™ software for structural analysis of the composite hull, deck and hard. Simcenter Femap is also used to support the team’s center of gravity analysis – as this has a direct influence on the performance of boats in water and allows them to adjust battery pack location to achieve the required performance characteristics.
Alongside Simcenter Femap, the Arc team also takes advantage of the computer-aided design (CAD) integrated into Simcenter 3D software for simulation tools used for smaller-scale part structural, vibration and thermal analysis work across the entire boat.
Simcenter has a lower barrier to entry for new engineers. It’s right there integrated with NX, so we’ll point them to that and as a result we’re using it a lot more.
Ryan Cook, cofounder and chief technology officer, Arc
NX, Teamcenter and Simcenter are all part of Siemens Xcelerator.
The convergence of hardware and software
In addition to electrification, another of Arc mission is to bring the power of software to the marine industry and use excellent industrial design to elevate the customer experience. The company has jettisoned the diverse range of dials, gauges and manual controls typically found on any boat helm. Instead, Arc focuses on delivering all its technological prowess to customers with a simple, beautiful helm. They design and engineer it using NX, which provides access to all the controls and customization options for performance (such as speed, water depth and ballast settings), navigation, entertainment and much more using a simple touch screen. This control system can be updated over the air to bring new capabilities and options as they become available.
In addition to over-the-air updates, Arc also created a robust telemetry pipeline that streams tens of thousands of data points per second per boat, allowing its software and controls engineers to continuously track and improve its fleet’s performance and bring new improvements and experiences to customers.
“Using software there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to deliver a far better user experience,” says Cook. “We run everything on the boat through our software controller. That way we have complete control over everything, from the motor and rudder to ballast pumps and everything else. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel so we’ve worked with our suppliers to open their software so we can have complete control that also delivers additional safety to the system and the user.”
Moving into the commercial space and expanding the product range
Along with its activities in the recreational and wake boating industries, Arc recently announced its first steps into the commercial marine industry. In collaboration with Portland shipyard, Diversified Marine, the Arc team is retrofitting a 26-foot tugboat with high-performance, zero-emission operations for use at the Port of Los Angeles – all based on Arc’s electric powertrain, software and the same high-voltage architecture designed for Arc Sport. Arc has also announced that it is opening a research and development (R&D) facility at the port and has begun to build the charging infrastructure needed to support the goal of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to move to zero emission equipment by 2030.
Arc’s mission is to electrify everything on the water, so we’re constantly looking to expand, and tugboats are the perfect first step into the commercial sector.
Ryan Cook, cofounder and chief technology officer, Arc
“Arc’s mission is to electrify everything on the water so we’re constantly looking to expand, and tugboats are the perfect first step into the commercial sector,” says Cook. “They have predefined mission profiles and always end their day at the same spot, so charging is easy. They also demand high torque, so electric is a perfect fit.”
Alongside its commercial operations, Arc has also recently unveiled the next product in its recreational boat product range with the Arc Coast. Departing from the wakesurfing vehicle, the Arc Coast is a “center console” all-electric boat that targets other waterborne activities such as fishing.
Based on Arc’s in-house developed powertrain, the 24-foot, 10-seater Arc Coast delivers the same sleek user experience and leverages the freedom of the all-electric configuration, giving greater mobility around the edge of the vessel by reducing the obstructions such as a gas-powered engine at the stern along with the same zero emissions, high-performance characteristics that Arc has staked its reputation on.
The future of Arc is sustainable
Arc seeks to continue to innovate in the marine industry without using predominantly fossil fuel power propulsion methods that don’t fit with today’s requirements for cleaner, more sustainable activities.
“The marine industry has been overlooked for many years,” says Cook. “A lot of great engineers go into aerospace and automotive and fewer have gone into marine over the past few decades. I’m excited to try and reverse that. We’d love more competition, more electric boat companies and more folks bringing their technology into the modern era. We’re moving very quickly and it’s a lot of fun to try and apply some fundamental engineering principles to the marine industry and see if we can come up with something better. Siemens Xcelerator helps us to get there quicker, develop new category defining products that delight our customers and create the electrification revolution we want to see in the marine industry.”
To learn more about Arc, visit arcboats.com.
