Nominations are now open for the 5th edition of the world’s only awards devoted exclusively to electric boats – The Gustave Trouvé Awards for Excellence in Electric Boats and Boating: ‘The Gussies’ for short.
This year’s awards are being presented by three leaders in the electric propulsion revolution:
- Aqua superPower, the first fully marinized dockside network of fast chargers for electric boats,
- BlueNav, developer of innovative hybrid solutions enabling more leisure and commercial boat owners to reduce their carbon impact
- Oceanvolt, pioneer and leader in electric motors and propulsion systems for sailboats, non-planing motorboats and small passenger ferries and water taxis
Anyone, including boatyards and manufacturers, can nominate a boat in any of the 9 categories, however only one boat from any manufacturer is eligible in any one category. Last year 160 boats were nominated in 9 categories.
‘The Gussies’ were created in 2020 to recognize the inventors, designers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and visionaries who are making advances every day to develop clean, quiet, zero emission technologies and innovations to reduce reliance on fossil fuel for marine propulsion.
The awards are named to honour Gustave Trouvé, a prolific French inventor with over 75 patents – among them the world’s first outboard boat motor, which he devised so that he could detach the motor from his prototype electric boat ‘Le Teléphone’ and take it home for further work in his Paris apartment.
The 29 Gussies Winners thus far represent 19 different countries: Austria, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.
Finalists in each category are decided by the International Judging Panel of representatives from national electric boat associations and other organizations such as Foiling Week and the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge, along with representatives from past Gussies winners. Finalists are voted on by the public with the Final Winners determined by weighted votes of the public and the Panel: 75% Panel, 25% Public.
Nominations are accepted until Midnight EST, Friday, October 25, 2024 and voting ends Midnight EST, Saturday, November 30, 2023, with winners announced the following week.
To find out more about the categories, criteria and rules, to nominate a boat yourself and to track the entries, head to https://thegussies.com