A diesel workboat is specified around tanks, range anxiety of a different kind, and a noise that crews have learned to live with. An electric workboat is specified around duty cycle, charging, and what the river or the farm actually asks of it between dawn and dusk.
That is not a compromise. It is a different design problem. Battery mass sits low. The helm is quieter. The boat can work in places where exhaust and vibration used to be part of the furniture — residential quays, fishing marks, night movements through the harbour.
It also refuses the fantasy of unlimited range. We would rather publish an honest working day than a brochure number that only exists in flat water. The next workboat has to work differently because the waters we care about — the Tyne, the inshore North Sea, the first miles out to wind — already know the difference between a tool and a toy.
Fully electric, at the point of use, with no apology for being a working boat.