EJET, the Slovenian boat engineering and design firm, presented its latest electric yacht tender – the 9X earlier this month. The new model boasts the firm’s EJET’s proprietary electric motor and drivetrain, in line with founder Žiga Jarc’s mission of providing sustainable transportation options for yacht owners and guests. It’s been an eventful few months for the young entrepreneur Jarc, who was named one of two Rising Stars in November at the 2023 Boat Builder Awards, held in assocation with Raymarine and organised jointly by IBI and METSTRADE. The Rising Star award celebrates those aged 35 or under, working for a boat builder, making a growing impact on any aspect of their business. Judges noted the rapid rise of EJET and Jarc’s bold vision to develop a boat brand complete with proprietary technologies.

How is 2024 shaping up for you so far?
We are very happy with the feedback we are getting from the market. We signed up our first dealer Master Yachting, who are known as Beneteau, Lagoon, Frauscher and Sanlorenzo dealer for DACH and Adriatic regions. Together we were present at Boot Dusseldorf, Budapest and Tulln boat shows. 

As you might imagine getting sales going as a new brand with a premium product in a niche like the tender market is tough but we expected that and I can say that our sales are meeting our production capabilities spot on. At the moment we only have one more 4X tender available for delivery by this summer. We also received a lot of good leads and inquiries for the next year season with clients having their yachts completing in 2025. 
 
The development of the 9X model is also going according to plan. Right now we are finishing the inner structure and bulkheads, in April we are starting with battery and other installations.
 
Are you expanding staff/facilities/product portfolio?
This year our main focus is to standardize the whole production process of the 4X tender so we can scale our production capabilities. We are also aiming to raise fresh capital to be able to scale production, expand our dealer network further and enter more markets, attend boat shows etc.  

What new launches can we expect in 2024?
The 9X model will be launched in Q3 this year. We are also working on expanding our business by offering turnkey electric propulsion systems to a wider market which is also something we need the investment for. More on that in early 2025.  

What make EJET unique in terms of its tender proposition?
I believe our drive train is, at the moment, the pinnacle of what is possible to achieve with the technology that is currently available. We have proved that with the performance of our own tenders and that is already more than most have accomplished in the electric propulsion space in this industry even among the big names. 

EJET is not only a tender. Being the only electric tender powerful enough for watersports and it is also a nice toy. And now for probably the strongest proposition; EJET is also an additional 46,2 kWh of battery capacity you can use to help power your hotel load on your yacht. This opens up a whole new dimension of usability of the EJET and saves the yacht owner a lot of money (and weight) upgrading their battery capacity that they would otherwise have to retrofit in order to reduce the running time of their generators.  Imagine sleeping through the whole night at 22 Celsius without having to listen to and smell the generator. With the EJET Dual Charging this is now possible.

What inspired you to start the business?
Coming from the user side of the yachting industry I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted out of my tender. That plus the passion to work on things I love. If I didn’t have that I would probably give up a long time ago, because the challenges that we had, and the ones I expect to have in the future are significant, considering we are the only company in the world developing the technology as well as building the final product. The idea came to me in 2016. First prototype was on water in 2019. In 2021 I started the Ejet company and got funding to finalise the development and start the production of the 4X and the 9X.  

What has been the biggest challenge?
The first major challenge we had was to develop the technology to support what we wanted to introduce to the market, make it reliable and safe to use at high performance output. Right now the biggest challenge is to scale the production. 

What would you do differently if you were to start over?
I would focus more on mass production and standardisation of the whole production process of the 4X tender. We definitely learned that lesson before we started engineering the 9X and implemented that knowledge into the process of developing it.