While fuel prices spiral and the world scrambles for alternatives to diesel-dependent transport, a quiet revolution is taking shape on a Tasmanian river.
Fly Derwent and New Zealand marine innovator Vessev are launching Australia’s first electric hydrofoiling passenger network on Hobart’s Derwent River – and the timing couldn’t be more pointed. As coastal and island communities around the world count the cost of fossil fuel dependency, Tasmania is betting on a fundamentally different model.
The network will launch with Vessev’s VS-9, a 10-seat, fully electric hydrofoiling catamaran that lifts clear of the water on carbon fibre foils, cruising at 25 knots with virtually no wake and zero emissions. Multiple VS-12s – carrying 30 passengers each – have also been reserved, marking the first order of that vessel globally and signalling this is more than a local experiment.
The appeal in a crisis moment is hard to miss. Conventional ferry services run on imported diesel, leaving operators and passengers exposed to exactly the kind of price volatility and supply disruption now rattling transport networks worldwide. Electric hydrofoiling sidesteps that entirely.
“This project reduces environmental impact and operating costs, while insulating the state from reliance on imported diesel and the volatility of fossil fuels,” said Fly Derwent Principal Cameron McCulloch, a Hobart engineer with nearly two decades of experience in clean energy.
But the ambition here goes beyond simply swapping fuel sources. Vessev CEO Eric Laakmann describes the project as a new modality for water transport altogether – not replacing like-for-like, but rethinking the structure of how people move. The vision, he says, is something closer to a subway system on the water – many routes, many locations, as many departures a day as boats and crew allow.
The scale analogy matters. Laakmann draws a pointed comparison to land transport: if public transit in a city like Sydney or Hobart revolved around a handful of giant vehicles carrying a couple of hundred passengers each, the system would be unworkable. “Public transport would suck,” he said plainly. Smaller, more frequent, more nimble – that’s how cities solved movement on land, and it’s the same logic being applied to the water. The VS-9’s 10-seat capacity and the VS-12’s 30 seats are not limitations; they’re the point.
Leader in renewables
Tasmania’s advantage runs deeper than the vessels themselves. The state already generates close to 100 per cent of its electricity from renewables – predominantly hydropower, topped up by wind and solar – meaning the Fly Derwent fleet will be charged from one of the cleanest grids in the world. Water, quite literally, powering water.
That energy independence is more layered than it first appears. Tasmania is interconnected with the Australian mainland, which means that when local hydro, wind and solar generate a surplus, it can be exported. And when renewable energy prices go negative on the mainland – as they increasingly do on high-generation days – Tasmania can import the excess. “Tasmania acts as a massive battery,” McCulloch explained. Lake Gordon alone, the state’s largest hydro station, can store 20 times the volume of Sydney Harbour as an energy source. The vessels themselves, he was quick to point out, draw remarkably little from that grid – comparable to a domestic EV, not an industrial installation. “Don’t want to overplay it using renewable energy,” he said. “The battery size on the VS-9 is very similar to the car we were literally sitting in.”
Hydrofoiling also solves a problem that conventional electric boats couldn’t: efficiency. By lifting the hull clear of the water and eliminating drag, the technology delivers up to three times the efficiency of traditional vessels – enough to make commercial electric services viable on a 60-kilometre route spanning New Norfolk to Opossum Bay. Laakmann put the comparison bluntly: watch the wake behind a conventional high-speed ferry, churning a hole in the water, dragging tonnes of displacement behind it. “Get the boat out of the water, and you’re flying. You really don’t make any wake.”
That efficiency unlocks something else: simpler charging infrastructure. Rather than a dedicated marine fuel facility, operators can use standard EV chargers on the end of piers, supplemented by onshore battery storage. “It’s nothing different to a car charger today,” McCulloch said – and it can be installed in months, ahead of the first vessel arriving.
Blending commuter and premium tourism
The commercial model is deliberately flexible, blending commuter and premium tourism use in the same vessel. McCulloch noted that in quieter daylight hours, when regular commuter routes ease off, the same boats could operate on-demand – an Uber-like service to any accessible wharf on the river, whether it sits on a fixed route or not.
Laakmann sees Tasmania as a proof point for a global shift.
“Almost every major city has waterways sitting largely unused for passenger transport,” he said, “and electric hydrofoiling changes that.” Australia is a natural fit: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart – all built around harbours, estuaries and rivers that carried people long before roads arrived, and that have sat largely empty for the past century while gridlock built on land. “Humans had the right idea initially,” Laakmann observed.
The technology itself is the product of three converging innovation streams that have matured simultaneously: the foiling revolution sparked by the America’s Cup (Team New Zealand’s foiling catamaran in 2013 demonstrated that a sailboat could travel at three times wind speed), the EV automotive boom that has driven down battery costs and improved energy density, and the sensor and control systems developed for drones and aerial robotics. These boats are, in effect, flying – and they rely on the same stabilisation technology that keeps drones in the air. “What we’re doing is combining this into a new class of vehicle,” Laakmann said.
Battery technology, in particular, continues to improve at around seven per cent per year in energy density – a rate that, compounded over a decade, would more than double the effective range and performance of the vessels now on order. It raises the prospect, Laakmann suggested, of vessels that actually get meaningfully better during their operational lives as battery modules are upgraded.
Closer to home, the opportunity extends beyond Hobart’s waterfront. Tasmania’s extraordinary concentration of inland lakes – largely untouched by tourism, protected by clean air and water quality that ranks among the best in the world – becomes newly accessible when the vessels operating on them produce no emissions and almost no wake. The environmental barriers that previously closed those lakes to motorised access look very different when the vessels in question run silently on renewable power and leave the water undisturbed.
The first stage of Fly Derwent will serve commuters and premium tourism operators from Hobart’s waterfront, with the VS-9 expected to arrive in early 2027. McCulloch is also exploring on-site battery storage and vehicle-to-grid integration to future-proof the network’s energy independence further.
It’s a vision that feels well-matched to the moment – not just for Tasmania, but for any city reconsidering what it means to move people sustainably when the old assumptions about cheap, reliable fossil fuels no longer hold.
