Future in boatbuilding

Hi!

I´m a frequent visitor to this site but until now I was only following the threads. I have also built a few smaller boats for my own use that I have enjoyed a lot.

Now I´m doing a research about the future of marine travel / design and looking for new innovations and design trends that may influence the next 10 years or so.

I would appreciate your thought and comments about what you think will be "hot" in the future.


Thanks for all help

/Lasse

 

Now this is going to be a very interesting thread!
For one, keep an eye on what's showing up in the Galleries on this site; that's a good source for design trends of the next couple of years. Also take a look at what's popping up at car shows, as boat styling has historically followed that of cars, at least since the '50s.
Beyond that, prediction is one fun game! Designers and their students inevitably go off on intriguing tangents all over the place.
Now, my opinions:
Unfortunately, market forces dictate that nothing radical shall go mainstream as long as what exists now suffices. So I'm expecting the next decade of design to be continuing evolutions of what we see now- sleeker, more organic shapes; a greater focus on luxuries and little details; a resurgence of some traditional elements.... at least among mass-production boats.
Also, the current revisions of the Hubbert energy reserve equations are predicting an absolute oil production peak less than a decade from now. With the price of gas already at a buck-a-litre in N.Am. and far higher in Europe, soaring fuel costs will likely put a greater emphasis on propulsion systems and high efficiency.
With so many generic-looking designs out there currently, it is likely that designers will explore both radical and traditional design themes, rather than building more of the same-old same-old fibreglass jellybeans. To each his own..... expect a lot of very pretty, distinctive designs with a genuine sense of purpose and meaning among the new limited-production and concept boats.

 

God knows what manufacturers will come up with but limited production yachts will get more expensive, for sure. The trend has been going toward buying larger boats for quite a while; don’t think that can go on for much longer because of the price, who will be able to afford these yachts?

Let’s try to predict limited production yacht trends... Well, since the “impression factor” is so important for most buyers, yachts won’t get smaller, what will happen? Competition is strong so boat builders will try to create yachts that “stick out”, they will gradually become more extreme, one way or another.

The influence on hull form that different rules imposed has peaked, yachts will now slowly become sleeker, indicating price down (but that won’t happen, it still has to stick out). Luxury will continue to be hot, some will go for wood, others will choose more “modern” materials, whatever, to stick out costs.

There are still many yachts out there without a generator today. We cannot imagine living at home without the benefits of electricity, it the future, we will “need” the same when we are on our boat so that will change. Integrated on-board systems will come.

For “normal mass-production” yachts, I predict a gradual move of manufacturing to Asia, this could mean that the price gap between “cheap mass-production” and limited production yachts will increase.

Mikey

 

I do not think any savings in operating a company will result in any price reduction. CEO's are so greedy and arogant that they pocket all new profits as THEIR reward for being in charge of the company. The purpose of modern CEO's is to take all the profits and leave nothing for the future of the company. There are a FEW exceptions to this trend. They are usually privately owned with several generations in the management chain. Even they have internal power struggles by very aggressive " put me in charge " types who would change it to a greedy CEO setup in a heartbeat. It is much easier to climb down the ladder than up.

 

To look at the smaller end of the scale...like canoes, kayaks, and smaller skiffs and dingies, I think you'll see even more of the buy outs of smaller companies by bigger companies. This trend has also lead to the "recreational" designs being more popular than "performance" orientated. Companies are trying for a one-size-fits all approach.

I think the performance type boats will remain market niches and the bigger companies will stay away from them.

On a general boating scope, I'm not sure what "future" trends will develop. I think with the way technology is improving, you may see the ability to target more specific performance envelopes. But for companies to really jump at these opportunities, the lead time and cost from concept to production must be improved.

Example: I'm involved in a project to bring a hull designed specifically for this product www.tailboats.com to market. We could have cut the time it will take to bring the first hulls ready for retail in half but it would have more than trippled the costs. Big companies with visions only reaching to the next quarterly report will push for innovation and return on investment quickly. To get something truly performance orientated takes at least a couple iterations but there is little patience to wait or willingness to open the pocket book for this kind of R & D.

It's a trade off between getting your money on a product that is "good enough" or taking the risk to get huge pay offs on something that is fine tuned.

Bottom: Speed and cost to market will dictate a lot of future trends in my opinion. Take that and $3.85 and you can get a cup of burnt coffee at Starbucks.

 

You understand exactly what CEO's expect to be sold and why. I would hire you in a New York Minute. Excellent analysis. When can you assist most of my staff out the door?

 

lol....just write me that 6-figure contract with expense account and we'll start chopping heads tomorrow!

 

future in electronics & controls

I think that one area of boating can be predicted with some accuracy as it will most likely mirror the industrial sector's progress in the last decade. To some extent both the industrial and marine electronics/controls sectors will follow the PC market place's example of development.

The future of all electronics on board, all engine instruments, all communication as well as a series of instruments not even in use will be a single screen display networked to different locations on the boat including your PA, your car, and home or office PC.

The reason this will happen is the same 'discovery' process that the PC market place went through. First, everyone offers their own version of hardware, software with little linkage followed by increasing linkage as the market winnows the vendors. Next the "standards" immerge and slowly but surely all the remaining vendors pick of the several comm, form factor and protocol standards and offer their products in those versions. Last the players get fewer and the conventions become more and more driven by what folks buy, and the entire system becomes available on the single screen.

Industrial controls did exactly the same steps about 4 years behind the PC industry; tracking each market development until an entire 100 acre refinery can be seen in a series of displays on one PC screen.

Once the marine products are offered in completely digital form there will be no limit to the networking and each boat will become a LAN. By that time (5-10 years) wireless WAN's will link the boat anywhere on earth to your home and office.

This is the future of marine instruments, communications and controls just as surely as its happened in the other market sectors.
Cheers,

 

Cheers to that, kmorin. Let's hope the boatbuilders take your advice. Imagine... a single big bank of screens on the bridge, integrating all your radar, nav, weather, ship's systems....
I wouldn't be surprised if the boat-electronics companies start using CANBUS or Ethernet systems (I've already seen a few Ethernet-ready gadgets from a few). Already the CANBUS backbone used to connect the dozens of computer modules in modern cars is proving far mroe reliable and adaptable than the old purpose-built gear ever was. I wouldn't be surprised either to see electronic engine controls and emission-control systems integrated into the ship's network, allowing the boat computer to adapt the ship's operation for best efficiency in varying conditions (wind, waves, air density, speed, etc.).

 

To get information standardized, all you need is a big YEN for it. All big supercomputer chips are from Japan. Open the fly by wire systems in F-16 or F-22 Raptor and it say, MADE IN JAPAN. They are ready now. We do not have the money to pay for it.

 

I should correct myself, it’s probably more like – we consumers will not be the ones asking for or driving this change, but we will get it anyway. And once we have it, we will soon wonder how we ever could have been without it.

Mikey

 

Fly by wire and it's inroads in the automobiles is not good. Realize that a bug or failure can stop all steering and motion at once. So, to bad if you lose everything at maximum speed. You are stuck in the opposite lane and causing a headon collision. Progress at any cost to increase the profit margin.

 

All this talk makes me glad I drive a car with no power steering, no power brakes, no powered windows, no powered or power-assisted anything, with a manual gearbox.
I like to feel in control of what I drive, not at the mercy of some computer. Same thing with electricity on boats - it is to be avoided wherever possible.
Steve

 

I beleive electronics can be of much help to a certain extent. The reason car manufacturers uses that much electronics is just plain buissness, less cables and easer maintenance, for the car shops.. But we end up paying the bill when it breaks.
I don´t think there is much to do about this fact, and most boats will have more and more electronics onboard no matter what we think now, but in 20 years it will be as natural as anything else..

Be the way, how many Wally yachts are there in Scandinavia?

 

Single Screen Future

Almost all military electronic form factors and platforms are VME (bus) or some derivative and they won't be the commercial versions we'll end up using.
The engine mfg's will be offering their own interface panels like they do industrial equip today. Raymarine, SeaNav and others are already networking their equipment and more will follow or die out. Once the network is open protocol, which will take time and lots of buying of proprietary junk- then other manufacturers will make their equipment "addressable". Pumps have no reason to be digitally monitored now as there is no concensus at to what network or protocol, but that will change.

What I'm describing in the marine environment has already happened to the office place and to industry and it will happen to boats and cars. The reasons are costs- chips are cheap and getting cheaper wires are expensive and redudant copper costs for the conductor(s) and more to install them. A networked system 'talks' to every device aboard and 'reports' to the single screen.

Fly-by-wire is actually the only way to fly most of the planes listed as no human has reflexes in the low milli-second range which is where the CPU makes decisions and adjustments on the VME bus. Sure they'll have flaws (fighters do crash on the occasion) and we'll all have some adjustments to make but the end of the hallway for this aspect of boating is digital and the end there is the Human Machine Interface. (HMI) I think B.Gates and crew at Redmond WA have proved this fact to the world and especially to those folks at IBM where proprietary hardware and protocols were king.

Single screen (most likely touch screen at that) will save builders a fortune- which they will NOT pass along, unfortunately. (just kidding) Single screen will require one cable stem to stern picking up all the devices into one local area network which will have some form of PC monitoring the 'health' of all the devices. A water in fuel sensor on the engine will squawk the bridge screen just like a bilge pump switch or a hot cutlass bearing. I look forward to being able to buy components that can be addressed and monitored so I can KNOW more what's happening everywhere aboard.

Cheers,