SeaBubble | Fast-Forwarding to the Future of On-Demand Urban Water Transportation

Summary
Many of the cities in EU are congested, and congestion increases air pollution, leads to more traffic accidents & makes them less accessible. At the same time a lot of cities were built and developed along some body of water which means that 30-40% of locations are within a 10-min walking distance from a river bank or canal. This creates an opportunity for water-based transport that was not exploited before due to low speeds and high emissions of diesel engines.
SeaBubble is a small, fast & very efficient electric hydrofoil craft that carries a driver & four passengers with a max speed of 30km/h, producing no emissions or noise. SeaBubble is designed by the same world-class team has previously built a unique sailing hydrofoil trimaran that broke the speed sailing record in 2009.
SeaBubbles will be operated as a water taxi service, which requires a network of mooring stations for boarding/unboarding passengers and charging the vessels. These stations will produce electricity via solar panels and hydrokinetic turbines, with the goal to make them autonomous from the grid. This will allow SeaBubbles to carry passengers between two points 2x faster that a regular taxi and at a comparable price.
Our goal is to have 60+ SeaBubbles operating by the end of 2018, active in 2-3 cities globally, as well as 12+ mooring stations, with a total electricity production of ~100MWh and a CO2 annual reduction of ~300+ tons with revenues of €10M+. Once successful, SeaBubbles will be creating jobs in vessel and mooring station manufacturing, hydrofoil craft driving as well as software development
SeaBubbles are supported by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and received interest of other cities in EU, and positive media coverage from Bloomberg, The Telegraph, The Verge and many others.
In this Phase 1 project the market assessment & cost/benefit analysis for SeaBubbles will be carried out and the business model validated.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/774086
Start date: 01-05-2017
End date: 30-09-2017
Total budget - Public funding: 71 429,00 Euro - 50 000,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Many of the cities in EU are congested, and congestion increases air pollution, leads to more traffic accidents & makes them less accessible. At the same time a lot of cities were built and developed along some body of water which means that 30-40% of locations are within a 10-min walking distance from a river bank or canal. This creates an opportunity for water-based transport that was not exploited before due to low speeds and high emissions of diesel engines.
SeaBubble is a small, fast & very efficient electric hydrofoil craft that carries a driver & four passengers with a max speed of 30km/h, producing no emissions or noise. SeaBubble is designed by the same world-class team has previously built a unique sailing hydrofoil trimaran that broke the speed sailing record in 2009.
SeaBubbles will be operated as a water taxi service, which requires a network of mooring stations for boarding/unboarding passengers and charging the vessels. These stations will produce electricity via solar panels and hydrokinetic turbines, with the goal to make them autonomous from the grid. This will allow SeaBubbles to carry passengers between two points 2x faster that a regular taxi and at a comparable price.
Our goal is to have 60+ SeaBubbles operating by the end of 2018, active in 2-3 cities globally, as well as 12+ mooring stations, with a total electricity production of ~100MWh and a CO2 annual reduction of ~300+ tons with revenues of €10M+. Once successful, SeaBubbles will be creating jobs in vessel and mooring station manufacturing, hydrofoil craft driving as well as software development
SeaBubbles are supported by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and received interest of other cities in EU, and positive media coverage from Bloomberg, The Telegraph, The Verge and many others.
In this Phase 1 project the market assessment & cost/benefit analysis for SeaBubbles will be carried out and the business model validated.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

SMEInst-10-2016-2017

Update Date

27-10-2022
Geographical location(s)
Structured mapping
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EU-Programme-Call
Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.2. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP
H2020-EU.2.1. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
H2020-EU.2.1.1. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
H2020-EU.2.1.1.0. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - ICT - Cross-cutting calls
H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility
H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility
H2020-EU.2.3. INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
H2020-EU.2.3.1. Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument
H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility
H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility
H2020-EU.3. SOCIETAL CHALLENGES
H2020-EU.3.4. SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport
H2020-EU.3.4.0. Cross-cutting call topics
H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility
H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017
SMEInst-10-2016-2017 Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility