They run the bottom of their boat all the way to the transom and hang their motors deep in order to keep the propeller in proper relation to the running surface. Let's take a Grady-White for example, and that's not picking on anyone, it's a known and well respected hull design. With traditional V-bottom boats the running surface goes all the way to the transom. You typically don't see inboard boats having a twin-step running surface. "The biggest unknown was it's a step-bottom boat. They know how limited the opportunities are to achieve those speeds in most real world boating conditions, but they can truly do a 40-42 mph cruise that hangs with any quad outboard boat out there." They don't feel the need to go that fast anymore. But our customer base is not a younger customer base, they're not in their 30's or 40's, they've been there, done that. The only sacrifice is we're getting 51-52 mph top end versus with twin 600 outboards you'd be getting 62 mph, and with quad 400 outboards you'll see 72 mph on the top end. So we're getting 40-42 mph, we're getting a mile and a quarter per gallon. Once we actually built the boat and splashed it, we found that to be the case. And it's that perceived image of 'quad engines is cool.' So this was an opportunity to ask, what is a realistic expectation in a customer's mind? Is it top end speed? Or is it cruise? We felt we could achieve the same cruising speeds as the outboards we're seeing, but in theory get 40% better efficiency. (Volvo Penta) looked at it in the context of their green initiative and asked, 'why aren't people talking more about efficiency?' I think everybody has that in their head, or on the tip of their tongue, but nobody is talking about it. "The conversation is always 'more engines, more horsepower.' Subsequently, if you're going to hang more engines with more horsepower, you'll need more fuel. For Albrecht, the starting point was understanding what's driving the current market.
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