California Dreamin'

Let’s start by grabbing some popcorn and enjoying Photon’s first feature reel—a culmination of Intrepid’s many travels over the past six months and Whit Hassett’s talented eye and direction:

🐻 CARB/CORE Details

Beautiful, right? Especially that fog along the Golden Gate Bridge - what a magical morning that was. But the magic in California doesn’t stop there.

As Photon has committed to focusing on the commercial marine sector for electrification, we have put time and serious effort into finding ways to make it feasible for operators to adopt our technology. Now, it’s official. We heard from the California Air Resources Board that we have received approval to be listed on the California Off-Road Equipment (CORE) voucher program. This program will cover up to 78% of the cost on a brand new electric commercial vessel built by Silverback Marine. We are the first electric outboard motor on the voucher program, and the only one paired with an aluminum workboat manufacturer. This week, we had the opportunity to share our news with the world.

• We also have three additional applications in the queue, including one of our system as a conversion kit and two other vessels with another boat manufacturer.

• As you can see above, the program offers up to $300,000 off the cost of a new electric workboat, as well as up to $100,000 for infrastructure upgrades.

• For more information on the program, check out our one-pager.

Customer & Program Updates

🛳️ Port of Friday Harbor and WSDOT Grant

• ALL SYSTEMS GO: Washington Governor Bob Ferguson finally signed the state budget into law last month, which means that we have officially kicked off our work with the Port of Friday Harbor.

• This grant will provide four electric work vessels to the Port and support infrastructure and programming for greater adoption and education regionally.

🇨🇦 Canadian Ocean SuperCluster

• Our team has been working with our boat builder partner ABCO to install a dual motor, dual battery system for use by an oyster farm. Installation and commissioning is currently in progress, and we look forward to sharing more highlights in the coming weeks.

• Our semi-foiling 28’ RIB catamaran is nearing completion. This vessel will be tested by a whale watching operation and a municipal harbor authority later this year.

Events & Sea Trials

🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇫🇷 Jet Setting Across Continents

Over the past 5 weeks, Photon CEO and Co-Founder Marcelino has been on the road from Portland, where he was one of the featured speakers at the first Oregon Innovation Summit in their Deep Tech Showcase; to New York’s Dirty Jobs Summit and the 3rd UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France where we were part of a curated group of startups leading ocean innovation.

UNOC nearly deserves its own newsletter, but suffice to say that the entire ocean ecosystem descended on a coastal town in the Mediterranean to take concrete steps towards resolving the funding gaps in our oceans. Among the many highlights from the trip were the inaugural Founders Race for the Ocean Regatta, hosted by Rypples, the Impactful Innovations Day, hosted by Katapult Ocean, Builders Vision, and Schmidt Marine, and the 1000 Ocean Startups Startup Reef, where we had the honor of exhibiting and pitching.

Alongside Marcelino’s investor road sea show, our efforts to establish in new markets and build new customer relationships have grown in parallel. Our Program and Revenue team Leon Wolf, and Chad White, have been busy stamping passports as well.

Chad joined Marcelino in Seattle for the Maritime Blue’s Venture Startup Showcase, then continued his travels, meeting boat makers, surveying equipment startups, and educating newcomers to Photon’s EV propulsion. Lastly, he headed up to Victoria, BC, where he joined Leon to meet with Titan Boats to sync on a joint venture for a Photon Marine powered demo boat for showcasing around the Salish Sea, Haro Strait, and Vancouver, BC.

Our CTO Nick Schoeps found himself in Halifax, NS last week alongside ABCO Industries outfitting their 26' electric landing craft. Together with our Ocean SuperCluster collaborators at the annual COVE Demo Days in Dartmouth, NS, we presented to Canadian law enforcement, Parks and Transportation, and Mariculture industries.

Gratitude🙏

We wanted to express our thanks specifically to a number of folks who’ve really stepped up for us recently:

🐻 CALSTART In partnership with the California Air and Resource Board, CALSTART launched the CORE Program in 2020, which has become monumental as we go to market in the US. We are grateful for their unrelenting efforts to advocate and advance the market for clean energy and transportation and pushing for incentives like California’s CORE program.

🌊 Joshua Berger of Maritime Blue UNOC was a pivotal week for us, and we thank Joshua nominating us to be featured at the Startup Reef Pavilion. Joshua, we’ll find a way to reciprocate the honor—we just need a moment for the jet lag to wear off and to find a suitable way to express our immense gratitude.

📹 Whit Hassett Whit is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has traveled along the west coast with us — from Portland down to San Francisco, fitting right into the Photon team. Thanks to her we have an incredible feature reel that tells our story better than ever before. We’re honored to be a part of her catalogue of work and look forward to traveling further north in the future later this year!

👏 Team Photon: Resilience and dedication are just the tip of the iceberg. This team is what makes Photon’s vision and mission a reality. A great team, like the one we’re building, is able to trust each other through unexpected turns as well as celebrate together when we’ve sailed across the finish line into some wins. From sales to engineering, there’s a strong wind at our backs as we progress through this next phase.

As always, we’re grateful you’re all a part of our journey. Every intro, insight, and investment is energy for us.

More updates soon—we hope to see you out on the water!

– Team Photon

_{Postscript: Discoveries and Delights that we think are worth sharing. ☀️}

• Mapping the sea floor with robots _{is quickly becoming a reality.}

• Watching Climate Tech Trends.

• UNOC3 Outcomes