Many of us have observed that "equivalent" gas motors produce more thrust than electric in the service we put them to. They give better speed, better acceleration, and do a better job of driving into wind and seas. If tests produce results that differ from observations then the tests aren't testing the thing being observed.
Thrust is utter bullshit useless quoted number. Utterly totally and cometely meaningles. It depenfs on flow conditiond and propeller!
Seems to me that power, which is proportional to torque x rpm and is a measure of how much work can be done in some time, isn't a bad place to start when comparing devices that you want to do work in time. It's almost like it was designed to for these kinds of comparisons. Not?
Yeah, the "equivalence" label is the worst. It is not exactly rocket science to look at shaft/power and see that a 1000W motor does not equal 5hp, aka 3,7ish kilowatts.
To add to the anecdotal evidence, a few years back a number of 20’ BayRaiders were caught out in an unexpected strong squall during a race in the Carrick Roads near Falmouth (gusting F7 - photo below). The race was abandoned, we all hurriedly dropped our sails and got ready to motor into the wind to return to the marina. Several had 2.5hp Suzuki outboards and got back without problems. I had my (now ex) Torqeedo 1003 with a less than full battery and made quite slow progress on full power. However, the battery ran out before I could reach home. I managed to grab hold of a Cornish Shrimper on a mooring and hang on until the rescue boat came back for us. Lesson learned: even in seemingly benign conditions, expect the unexpected and don’t go out without at least one full battery.
One BayRaider with a crew of three managed to sail back to the marina under jib and mizzen. I thought that we were too close to the lee shore to get the boat reefed down quickly and so relied on the motor to claw our way upwind while we sorted ourselves out. With hindsight and more experience, we might have got back under jib and mizzen too but it’s not always easy to make the right decisions when confronted with the (very) unexpected.
Torqeedo really needs a major redesign of their product line to fix those issues of capacity and fragility. But a quest for higher short-term profitability doesn't leave much room for that sort of investment.
Having been a somewhat disgruntled owner of a noisy Torqeedo 1003 (with two extra batteries) and now a much happier owner of an ePropulsion Spirit Plus (with the new solar controller), I think that they were comprehensively overtaken two years ago. ePropulsion was founded by ex-Torqeedo managers who obviously thought, and subsequently found, that they could do better at the lower end of the range. Torqeedo have been spending a lot of effort and money developing seriously big electric motor systems, such as new 50 and 100 kW saildrives. However, they have neglected the smaller outboards except where they have been forced to improve (eventually and insufficiently) by superior competition.
One bit of math you're missing here is that he replaced a diesel that weighed 302lbs dry (280 for the motor, 22 for the gear); you can double the battery size of his setup, add the motor weight, and be right around the weight of the yanmar he pulled out. CarCrash's current setup is ~100lbs less than his old diesel before considering fuel weight and works very well for his use case.
And that's the issue for most people. Whether it's offshore event requirements or inland cruising, 10-12 hours at hull speed is still gonna call for unreasonable costs and/or bank sizes with current technology. In a few years, the battery cost reductions may make it reasonable but it won't really take off until energy densities double once or twice.
