The Nautique electric ski boat looks like it puts up a large wake...probaby good for wake boarding....not so good for slalom water skiing and it is limited to about 1.5 hours of ski time. I liked skiing behind my sport nautique up until a few years ago when sailing took over.
Agreed. Ski boats are no longer really ski boats, as it seems wakeboarding boats are the trend. Wakeboarding boats typically have large water bladders in the stern to sink them down and provide large wakes to surf, certainly not a design brief for slalom skiing. This makes heavy batteries a good thing for wakeboard boats.
Looking at the video and hearing the system should provide 2-3 hours of operating time, well, that ain't gonna get it done for a lot of families who like to take their boat out, ride to the skiing area from the launch area, and then spend the day on the boat, pulling kids and friends around. This electric drive train surely wouldn't have worked for my friends and I back in our 20s, where we'd typically have at least a 20 minute run from launch ramp to the back creek for smoothest skiing, and then a whole day's worth of runs between 3 or 4 different skiers/wakeboarders.
I could certainly see a fleet of these on the professional circuit, or for those people who live on man-made ski lake communities (I saw ads for those kinds of places in Arizona back in the day) but just not seeing the utility for a typical family yet.