Grove Boats

Grove Boats is a Swiss company that designs solar-electric and electric passenger boats and has them built by partner yards across Europe, rather than running a single production line of its own. Its professional vessels carry between 12 and 100 passengers, and it offers electro-solar, hybrid and fuel cell configurations depending on the operating profile of the route. Grove states that its technical team has contributed to more than 40 vessels sailing across Europe, and that some units have been in service for over 20 years, which is a longer operating record than most of this sector can point to. The company also initiated Sun21, the solar-powered catamaran that made the first transatlantic crossing under solar power, reaching New York in 2007. The build-by-partner model is the distinctive part of the business. Because the boats are commercial passenger vessels rather than production leisure craft, a project can be placed with a yard near the operator, which shortens delivery logistics and keeps later refit work local to the route. In effect the specification travels rather than the hull. The trade-off for a private buyer is that Grove is a design and integration house first, so the reference points it publishes are route economics, passenger throughput and years in service rather than a model catalogue with prices.