jpwhit

Congrats, I think you'll be very happy!

Automakers are moving to EVs because there is huge money to be made. EVs will be much more profitable for automakers in the long run due to the simple fact that there are about half the number of parts involved to make an EV vs a Gas automobile. The variant and version matrix for EVs also tend to be much smaller because by nature they are more software driven in terms of features and function than a traditional gas automobile. And if you don't understand how the version and variant matrix drives cost for the auto makers, then you'll have a hard time understanding the economics of EV manufacturing. They are moving so quickly because they don't want to become the next Kodak. I know because I work with senior executives at most of major automakers and it's a hot topic of discussion.

@kirkbauer I handle long trips in my Tesla similarly but I tend to stop for only 10-12 minutes of charging at a time but a little more frequently. So, to your key point, you just treat it a little differently than fueling up a gas vehicle. For others that haven't experienced life with an EV. When you're down to 30% battery capacity and stop at a fast charger, your charging rates starts off at around 1000 miles per hour of charging. When I stop for 12 minutes of charging, I can add about 200 miles of range. @kirkbauer also points out another key point. When I see electric car reviews, more often than not, they ignore the brands charging networks and fast charging capabilities. It's about the most important thing to consider if you're buying an EV. This is where Tesla is still pretty far ahead of everyone else. But others are catching up. These charging characteristics are relevant IMO to boats, and in particular 3-event boats. Because, at about mid-state of charge, you can charge the batteries at a faster rate than power is used from the battery during use. That means for a slalom boat on a private lake, if you plug the boat in whenever the boat is at the dock, you don't need a large amount of battery capacity. If the boats sits at the dock for more minutes between sets, than the actual 15-16 seconds per pass times 6 for pulling a slalom set, you'll only need battery capacity for a few sets. In that scenario, an EV slalom boat could be significantly lighter than a gas version. I think it's possible, that 3-event boats could potentially be an early adoption scenario for EV boats. I realize this wouldn't fit everyone's use case for a ski boat, but it likely fits a large enough segment of the ski boat market to be viable. And such a boat once you get over initial high R&D costs of first models, could be made for a less cost than current ski boats. And before everyone jumps in about the dangers of electricity around docks, that is such a simple engineering issue to solve. It's virtually a non-issue. Also, a significant percentage of docks already have AC power for lifts and lights and such. It doesn't become significantly more of a safety issue to run higher voltage or higher amp capacity to the dock. 115v at 15 amps is quite sufficient to kill you. Not really much of an issue to be "more dead". And the requirements for running electricity for docks does a pretty good job relative to safety. Like most things, people get hurt when the safety requirements are ignored.

@Horton, you are exactly right. Not only that, but it's amazing to the extent that they have halted pretty much all R&D on gasoline engines. My work has me in contact with the technology leaders at just about every major auto company and the Tier 1 suppliers such as Bosch, Continental, Denso, etc. I haven't seen such a dramatic and absolute shift in direction in my entire career.

A lot of people on this thread should rent a Tesla model 3 from Hertz for a weekend so they can see what electric vehicles are really like. Take it on a road trip, I think you'll be very surprised by the reality of it.

Based on my last 6 months of driving, my Tesla Model Y is costing me the equivalent 95 cents per gallon of gas, compared to the BMW M3 it replaced. On top of that, it's really the most fun and exciting car to drive that I've ever owned. I can't imagine how much I'd have to spend for a gasoline car to get 3.5 second 0-60. And the off the line torque is truly mind blowing. So why are we arguing about the environment? I just don't get it.... I expect an electric ski boat would be equally impressive.

@SevernRat glad to help. Again, having your wife skiing at 28 and hopefully your daughter getting excited about skiing rings true to my background. My wife has been learning the course the last few years and skies at 28. And my daughters skied at slower speed during their learning years. And I teach a lot of female skiers the course at our lake house, so I care a lot about slow speed wakes. The ski wake at slower speeds is something that varies quite a lot by boat model. Also, the fact that you're skiing with full rope length may be significant as well and frankly I don't really know what the wake is like at full rope length on many of these boats. But it may be better. Our Ski club upgraded from a 196 to a 200 in 2014. The 200 has a better wake at slower speeds than the 196. I also have a 2019 ProStar for slalom course skiing at our lake house. It also has a good slower speed wake. Given all you're said, I think a Sunsetter or Response LXI, may be the best balance point for you as others have also suggested. It has the advantage of having a higher freeboard than most of the other slalom boats so should give more of a margin weighting the boat for wakeboard and surfing. Net, I could see it being the right balance for what you want, but the slow speed wake is little bit of an unknown for me. I've only skied behind the 197 / X7 in a tournament, and I wasn't that impressed with the wakes. But at the time I was skiing 15 off and 30mph, and the 197 is known for having a respectable slalom wake at higher speeds and shorter line lengths. The 197 also has a reputation for being a great trick boat because the wakes get bigger as you slow down, so I tend to think it wouldn't be the greatest option for your wife / daughter. Having owned and used both a 200 and newer ProStar on both private, but more importantly on public lakes with other surf boat traffic, I can't imagine feeling safe ballasting them for surfing. anyway ...just my 2 cents, but I doubt you're going to find many people that have first-hand experience with all these boats, especially the characteristics at slower speeds and full line length. Ideally, if you can find something and are able to test it out, I'd recommend having both you and your wife try it and see what you think. If you're happy with it, that's all that really matters. I'll also add that if you're a tinkerer, a surf boat can be pretty addictive. It's the ultimate toy for someone that likes to tune and improve things. The other thing that I like about surfing, is it's really very social. You can take 10 people out on the boat, and even if they have little experience surfing, most can learn to do something first day out. And all the action happens right there within speaking distance, so the boat full of people tend to get very engaged. Slalom skiing will always be my first passion, but when you have lots of time to burn on a big lake, it's hard to deny the appeal of surfing.

This confused me, and still confuses me to some extent, even though I personally have Camaro Blacktec's in size S, M, and L. My medium was ordered and labeled as a Blacktec 2.0, my S and L were ordered a year later as Blacktec 2.0, but the tag and graphics on the actual wetsuit that arrived is marked Blacktec 1.5, yet the specs on the fabric thickness on the tags is the same for all three. And from my usage of them, I can't tell any difference between any of them.

A lot of us feel for you because we've been on the search for good crossover boat. I owned a 1997 Four Winn's Horizon RS for many years and that turned out to be a descent crossover boats. It was one of the few I/O boats that was reviewed by waterskiing magazine as a reasonably acceptable slalom boat. I actually learned to ski the course behind that boat. It was also a pretty good wakeboard boat. It did have a 5.7L engine and perfect pass which helped a lot. I grew boating on a large public lake a lot and this is where I used that boat. Unfortunately, or actually fortunately, joining a private ski club in 2010, when my daughters started skiing on the UNC waterski team, made it clear that a crossover boat wasn't going to keep cutting it for me. The club had a 196 which really raised the bar for me on what I viewed as an acceptable slalom wake. Hence, I'm compelled to ask the following. You're currently skiing behind a 97-05 196, which has an outstanding slalom wake, especially at 32mph and faster. You haven't said what speed you currently ski, which could make a fair amount of difference. So, a key question for you IMO, is will you be happy with a lesser slalom wake than the 196? Will you only be skiing behind the new boat, or will you still be skiing behind a 196 at times and be comparing the slalom wakes? You've effectively set a high bar. If you're not willing to compromise relative to the 196 slalom wake, as other stated here, the only boat that "may" be close to viable is the pre-2005 Sunsetter LXI. But I've never skied behind that boat to say how the slalom wake compares to the 196. Not that I didn't try, when I was on my search for a good crossover boat 10 years ago, I tried for a couple years to buy the crossover unicorn (pre-2005 Sunsetter LXI) without any luck. Maybe someone here that is familiar with the 196 and SSLXI can say how the slalom wakes compare at slower and faster speeds. My only real experience with SSLXI, is one of my buddies at the ski club owned one and still regularly talks about how much he regrets that he sold that boat. And that if he came across one, he'd buy it without a second thought.

For clarity's sake, the answer you'll get from ZO on compatibility will be based simply on whether your existing boat already has the e-controls ECU or not. ZO doesn't want to get into the business of what is required to modify an engine to make it compatible. What others on this thread have rightly pointed out, is your engine can be modified to make it compatible with ZO even if it doesn't currently have an eControls ECU. But that's not something ZO or PCM would officially say they support. Not at all implying it's a bad idea or bad way to go, just trying to make sure the options are clear. And I think it understandable why neither ZO nor PCM would want to officially support that, there's not likely a good business case for it. If you want to go the way of modifying your engine to make it compatible, that's very doable and proven safe, but either you'll have to have the ability to do that yourself, or be willing to take the boat to a shop with the experience to do it correctly. I would be surprised if you'd find many dealership service departments that would be willing to take that conversion on without support from PCM and ZO.

It all depends on your definition of acceptable. Assuming you're free skiing, it's certainly doable. There is no magic formula so you're just going to have to experiment. Some things that should help. Speed will be your most effective way to reduce the wake. You may have to work at getting use to skiing at faster speeds, but ideally you would get up into the 32-34mph range. Get as much weight out of the boat as possible. Larger boats have a lot of storage and lots of stuff in the boat starts to add up. Of course, fewer passengers will help. I would not fill the mid boat ballast. Some modest amount of weight up in the very nose of the boat may help, but I would do that with lead weight bags or with passengers, not with ballast tanks. Third is get a slalom rope with takeoff loops. Experiment and find the distance back from the boat with the best wake. Hopefully your boat has the optional removable slalom pylon. If you don't have the pylon, look and see if the boat has the receptacle for it. It should be right in front of the engine hatch in the center. If you have the receptacle but not the pylon, see if you can find one. I would try posting on MasterCraft Teamtalk to see if someone has one they're interested in selling. A lot of time the best wake may be at 28 off. For all of this, don't try to visually look at the wakes to judge what is best, that can be very deceiving. Experiment with skiing and what feels the best from a skiing perspective.

@75Tique some of that info is accurate, but some of it is dated. In terms of the club S of Raleigh. Not sure if you're referring to Panther Lake or Lake Magnolia. I'm a member of Panther Lake. But Panther and Magnolia are both very active clubs and both have some capacity for new members. If anyone wants more details I'm happy to discuss. Coble is a great place, but is primarily a business. Not really setup as a general ski club. There are other areas a little further east including the old Centurion site. And there are other places to ski where people aren't as included to share a lot of info publicly. The Raleigh/RTP and Charlotte areas are the two big population centers, but have very different vibes. One being primarily a technology hub and the other being a banking / financial services hub.

Asheville is a great place. Besides the breweries and great restaurants in the downtown area, if you're a mountain biker. There is an abundance of world class mountain biking in the area. I ride in that area all the time and enjoy the all day or multi-day races in the area such as the ORAMM, PMBAR, DoubleDare, etc...

@darinmontgomery I think you bring up an interesting point. Whether skier prefer the feel of the pull over status quo today may not be as important as the benefits of consistency. And what people tend to prefer is often what they are accustomed too.

@BraceMaker it really depends on the details of what they do to limit liability concerns. For example, the sensing that Tesla uses to make sure they can detect a driver's hand on the steering column, would have to be in the steering column. Tesla is also moving towards a cockpit camera now along with very sophisticated computer vision technology that requires quite a bit of computing power. That computing capacity must be implemented in a safety critical certified manor. While a linear actuator will move the cable, it gets a little more complicated to make sure the driver can "overpower" the actuator in an emergency. That also may put more stresses on the existing cable and other assemblies that they can't reasonably handle. I'm not saying it isn't possible, almost anything is possible at some level of expense, I'm very interested to see if it plays out as feature of new boats, or as a retrofit system, or both. That's also will be interesting from a liability perspective. If it's a feature of the boat, then who to hold accountable for liability is fairly clear. If a user installed a retrofit, seems like liability would get pretty complicated.

Can this be retrofitted to existing boats? Knowing what must be involved, I would tend to think this would have to be built into new boats. I would expect the liability to be handled much like Tesla self- driving. The system would include checks to ensure not only is there a driver, but the driver is paying attention. This is part of why I'm thinking this wouldn't be added on to existing boats. I don't really use the self-driving in my Tesla, not because I don't trust it, but because I feel like the effort to keep alertness checks happy is more work than driving. But I do appreciate the safety aspects of the self driving systems observing and keeping you out of an accident. I've had it truly save my bacon once from what would have been a serious accident. But for tournament skiing, where this really would level the playing field, it seems pretty much inevitable. I expect it'll end up being very similar to the ZO adoption in the tournament world.

Also the early boats didn't have the final prop for the 5.7L engine. You definitely want do change out the 1688 on any boat that still has that to the 654. The exception to that may be the 2010, I don't really know if the 654 works well on that year with the different prop angle or not.

Not saying don't buy a 2010, but just realize the it was the first year and they changed the prop shaft angle in 2011 to improve the boat further. Sort of like the 2014 ProStar where they changed the transmission ratio for 2015 and beyond with the 5.7L engine.

@jayski https://theconversation.com/switching-to-electric-vehicles-could-save-the-us-billions-but-timing-is-everything-106227 Agree there will need to changes, but the problem is very manageable at any realistic rate of EV adoption.

14 more years will put into the age range of Tommy Harrington, who I ski with in my ski club. He's still going strong and an inspiration, so I'm looking forward to partaking in EV Ski boat technology ....

@Cnewbert and I have experimented with moving my starter battery in my 2019 ProStar to the same location used in the newer models. And I can tell a difference. It's not just taking the weight out of the rear, it's moving that weight forward. And most people are aware that throwing 50-75 of weight towards the front of 14-19 boats does tend to improve the wake. One of my winter projects is to move the battery permanently to the forward location. I'm also going to move to spiral wound lead acid battery technology because that cuts the battery weight by about 50%. I've already changed my fan situation to get rid of the fan noise issues like the new boat. Another winter project to to replace all the steering linkage fitting to ball joints like the latest ProStars

@Cnewbert lithium-based batteries are quite safe if they are engineered properly. Most incident you read about in the media, where bad things happen, almost always are examples of where systems were not engineered properly. That is also likely why you haven't seen any ski boat manufactures move to lithium based starting batteries. Any Lithium based battery that is packaged into what looks like a historical 12v lead acid car battery is a major engineering compromise right from the start. 12V lead acid batteries have charge and discharge characteristic that are dramatically different than lithium-based batteries. Companies that offer lithium-based batteries in 12V car batteries formats, must pack them with lots of electronics to try and adapt the charge and discharge characteristics between the two technologies. Those electronics introduce reliability and safety issues if not engineered and tested very rigorously. Net, that's not a very good approach right from the start. And I would never expect to see a major car or boat company adopt that approach. If they were going to adopt lithium-based starter batteries, they would likely engineer a solution that looked nothing like a traditional 12v lead acid starter battery. But quite frankly, the return on investment of that engineering expense simply isn't worth it. Here a good example of a very similar situation. Until 2021, all Tesla's have a traditional 12v lead acid style starter battery just like a traditional gas-powered car. Most of the time when people learn of that fact, they think it sound crazy. But it's the same situation. For pragmatic reasons, it made the most sense from an engineering perspective. Tesla needed to leverage the huge market of traditional 12 automotive parts, they also needed to make sure in failure cases of the propulsion battery, that they could meet all safety considerations such as the brakes and steering still working. They could have engineered a new solution based on lithium battery technology, just like the propulsion battery, but from a business point of view that simply didn't make sense. The cost to develop a new technology for that problem simply didn't outweigh the benefits of just using the existing technology. It's interesting that beginning with Tesla cars introduced just recently they did decide to engineer a different solution. But I'm fairly sure that's because volumes of their cars have now risen to the point where it does make sense to break the reliance on a traditional automotive 12v system from a manufacturing cost perspective.

In the last 5 years or so, boat models have drastically diverged into even more specialization. Nobody really makes the boat you're looking for anymore. All the dedicated ski boats are really too small, with low free boards, and very little storage. The rest of the boat models have specialized too much on wake surfing. I've owned and used the older 200 with the side storage lockers as well as a 2019 ProStar on larger lakes. For the most part, what people have said here is my experience as well. The bow on both of those boats is too small and takes on water too easily to be very good general purpose boat. Historically, the Malibu ski boats have had higher free boards and been better outside the domain of dedicated ski lakes, but I'm simply not familiar enough to give much direct feedback on the newer Malibu's.

Thanks for the offer, but i doubt it'll work. It's a difference connector and it's a 5 wire interface vs 6 wire for RA119005.

Thanks @Jody_Seal, sent you a PM.