Sport boat

What it means

A sport boat is built around performance: a planing hull, a powerful drive, and a layout that puts the helm and the ride first. Waterskiing and wakeboarding boats belong here, as do fast day cruisers whose appeal is the passage rather than the destination.

The trade an electric sport boat makes

Planing costs energy. Lifting a hull onto its own bow wave and holding it there takes several times the power of displacement cruising, and every one of those kilowatts comes out of the battery. An electric sport boat can be genuinely quick — instant torque suits the job — but it will run for a fraction of the time at full speed that it will at cruising speed. The published top speed and the published range almost never describe the same afternoon.

Why it matters

If this is the boat you want, read the range figure with particular care and find out the speed it was measured at. The gap between the two numbers is the whole story of the category.