Thunder Venetian Taxi – a pioneering luxury Venetian water taxi using green technology

 

 

Venice directs its choices towards a more sustainable way of life. A green luxury watercraft with a hybrid engine intends to preserve the fragile Italian city.

The Venice-based design studio Nuvolari Lenard recently unveiled a pioneering luxury Venetian water taxi that will help to preserve
the historic city through the use of “green” technology, complemented by the studio’s luxury finishing.

Thunder Venetian Water Taxi is set to make an impact on the local Venetian community and the wider yachting world.

Although the technology onboard is ultra-modern, the naval design studio made every effort to respect the stylistic heritage of the classic water taxis for which Venice is famous, and so the new designs use traditional wooden materials with some modernisation. Nuvolari Lenard has received a request for the 9.2-metre vessel to be used as a limousine tender for a superyacht client, which givesan idea of the degree of comfort and quality of the project.

“As Venetians, Dan (Lenard) and I feel a strong connection with the city and have experienced first-hand the damage that is being caused to its delicate structures, through air and noise pollution as well as physical erosion. We felt that it was crucial to address theproblems facing our beautiful hometown, and that Nuvolari Lenard was well placed to lead the charge in finding a solution, through aunique project dedicated to helping Venice,” said Carlo Nuvolari and Dan Lenard.

Venice therefore as an ideal laboratory for modern technologies capable of guaranteeing the minimum environmental impact and combined, in the Nuvolari Lenard project, with elegant and classic lines and with the use of wood.

The first unit of the 14-seat luxury water taxi, Thunder, has been built at Cantieri Vizianello in Venice which developed the mechanical and electronic coupling system of the hybrid system. After a test period of about a year, it has obtained complete approval by the classification bodies. It is therefore now a marketable product and no longer an experimental prototype.

“We hope that this progressive model for transportation in the city will change the mindset of the historically conservative transport companies in Venice,” said Nuvolari Lenard.

For another prototype experimental project, Nuvolari Lenard said it is currently in discussions with an Asian car manufacturer about the potential for using a hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system, which is a very clean technology used in the aerospace field. Current limitations on the storage of hydrogen on vehicles mean that it will take some time before this technology obtains the necessary certifications to be placed on the market.