Innovative electric outboard wins DAME R&D award

Yesterday, the TEMO 450 electric outboard from Nantes based French company, TEMO, was awarded the DAME R&D Excellence in Adversity Award during the online METSTRADE Connect 2020.

Fighting off 47 entries for this special one-off prize, the TEMO 450 represents a completely fresh look at how to design an electric outboard and has been introduced to market despite the challenges of 2020.

Andre Hoek, Chair of the DAME Jury, presented the award. He says: “The TEMO 450 is definitely new and something that none of the Jury members had never seen before. A lot of research and development work was involved, which was our focus for this year’s special award. The TEMO is modern, yet hints at long-tail motors in Asia and sculling oars on the transoms of small dinghies. It’s very special and we wish the company a lot of success with this really unique product.”

The DAME Jury also selected four very strong products as close runners-up:

• Seakeeper 1 from Seakeeper
• OSCAR ONE 320 from BSB Artificial Intelligence
• B&G Nemesis from Navico
• SATELLITE COMPASS™ SCX-20 from Furuno.

The DAME R&D Excellence in Adversity Award replaced the DAME Awards this year when it became clear it would be impractical to physically assess the many products that are put forward across the different categories. This one-off award allows METSTRADE exhibitors to demonstrate they have kept their R&D efforts fully active, despite COVID restrictions.

Commenting on the overall quality of submissions, Andre says: “Given all of the difficulties of this year, we never expected such a large number of high quality entries. We saw strong evidence of commendable research and development effort in hybrid propulsion systems, marine electronics, electrical installations, fuel cells, dynamic stability and gyros, among other areas. Very interesting new products have been developed and launched when people have been working remotely which, I know from the experience of my own design team, is not easy. I’m proud that so many people have entered this year’s DAME R&D Excellence in Adversity Award.”

METSTRADE Exhibition Manager, Sarah Westdijk adds: “It’s hard to imagine METSTRADE without the DAME, so we were all very pleased to be able to conceive and run this special R&D focused edition. Our special thanks go to the jury for being so adaptable at quite short notice and to all companies who entered.

“Pushing the boundaries of design is such an important priority for the industry, particularly in a year when many new people have found boating for the first time. We’re already looking forward to celebrating our 30th edition next year in times that will hopefully be much easier for everyone.”