From Garage to Blue Ocean: A Zero-Carbon Odyssey

In 2015, the sea-mist above Malibu had just lifted when three people flipped a derelict kayak on its back in the sand.
• Leo, a surf coach, had just been warned by the Coast Guard: gasoline engines were scaring migrating dolphins.
• Maya, a former Tesla battery engineer, held a retired Model S battery module in her hands.
• Chris, an F1 team control-algorithm expert, wanted to run the vector program he’d written on a wilder racetrack—an ocean wave.

In Leo’s mother’s garage they welded their first aluminum frame, slid the battery pack into a rotomolded hull, and flashed Chris’s F1 code into a 25 kW motor. At 3 a.m. “Prototype Zero” skimmed across Malibu Lagoon: zero emissions, 50 km/h, 55 dB of noise—quieter than a gull’s cry.

They posted the test-run video to Facebook. Within 48 hours seventeen messages arrived. One came from a Maldivian water-rescue center:
“We need boats that don’t scare the dolphins and never burn diesel—can we buy them?”

So the trio quit their jobs, pawned their surfboards, and crowdfunded 80 000 USD to launch WAVEKRAFT.

Eight years on:
• Electric boats now serve sea-rescue teams, surf schools, and resorts in 32 countries.
• They have logged 180 million metres of range and saved 2 100 tonnes of CO₂—equivalent to planting 95 000 mangroves.
• A global “boat-storage-grid” circular chain reuses retired hulls and second-life batteries.

Today WAVEKRAFT is more than a boat company; it is a zero-carbon odyssey that began in a garage.
“Make every voyage a tribute to the ocean.”

In the next decade the goal is to retire 100 000 petrol-powered boats and protect one million square nautical miles of crystal-clear sea.
The story continues—and the next chapter will be written by everyone who steps aboard.