There’s A Hot New Amphibious Car You Can Buy That Doesn’t Make Any Sense

We’re really big fans of amphibious vehicles here at the Autopian. Jason can find the weirdest amphibians you’ve never seen before while I cover the ones that fly and camp. Yet, we’ve never come across one that’s truly as baffling as you’re about to see here. This is the WaterCar EV, an amphibious car thing that’s absurdly slow on land, not much better on water, and not even fully electric as its name would suggest. Help me understand what’s going on here, folks.

There’s always something fascinating about a vehicle that tries to straddle multiple classes at the same time. There have been helicopters that tried to be RVs, RVs that tried to be sports cars, sports cars that tried to be planes, and so on. However, a favorite of dreamers and engineers appears to be making land vehicles propel themselves in water. From the cute Amphicar to the BYD YangWang U8, people are obsessed with putting wheels on boats or hulls on cars. There have even been plenty of RVs designed to camp at a KOA or on a lake.

Now, many of our boating readers would be quick to say that many of these vehicles are terrible cars and worse boats, or vice versa. However, I can still find a reason you might want to own one. I mean, the Amphicar is just plain cool. The folks of WaterCar call themselves the leaders in autonomous vehicle manufacturing and they’ve built some truly wacky stuff since the company was founded in 1999.

From Car Bodies To Amphibians

The WaterCar is the brainchild of Dave March. According to Body Shop Business, March’s roots were in bodywork. March has been in the autobody repair trade since the 1970s and over the years he rose to found the expansive Fountain Valley Bodyworks facility in California in 1975.

One of March’s fascinations is with the Amphicar, a vehicle he restored more than once through his shop. However, March was disappointed with the Amphicar’s boring 7-knot performance on water and its tendency to take on way too much water. He thought he could build a far better amphibious vehicle.

At first, March just wanted to build an amphibious vehicle for himself with modern performance on both land and water. Then, he realized that there’s an actual market for commercially produced amphibious vehicles. March started development on his amphibious vehicle project in the 1990s and opened WaterCar in 1999 to be the home of his efforts.

In the period between then and 2010, March and his team produced three prototypes. One of them was the Python, a wild six-seat boat and SUV thing that harnessed power from a Chevy Corvette ZR1. In case you’ve forgotten just how great that Corvette was, it had a 6.2-liter V8 good for 640 HP. In the car, that meant 60 mph in 3.4 seconds, 100 mph in 7 seconds, and a top speed of a few clicks over 200 mph.

As a six-seater amphibious SUV? It was still good for a top speed of 127 mph on land and a neat 60 mph on water. Alright, that’s pretty good! Sadly, this ridiculous beast never went into production due to what would have been high production costs. But the Python didn’t bow out without setting a Guinness World Record for amphibious vehicle speed.

Instead, March’s first production vehicle was the $135,000 WaterCar Panther, a vehicle that took 14 years to develop and ended up creating 27 patents along the way. It looks like a Jeep and uses a handful of Wrangler parts, but it rides on a custom chromoly steel frame, has a mostly custom body, and is powered by a 3.7-liter Acura V6 engine rated at 305 HP. The 3,000-pound Panther goes about 80 mph on land and about 45 mph on water. WaterCar advertises a 60 mph acceleration time on land in just 4.5 seconds, which would be quick for any car, forget one that can also cruise in water.

WaterCar’s amphibians work like some of the others we’ve seen out there. They use fiberglass hulls and a wheel retraction mechanism for when you hit the water. However, WaterCar has found success where other companies sank. WaterCars have been featured in countless news broadcasts, on Mr. Beast, on The Bachelor, and of course, featured on Jay Leno’s Garage. In 2014, March told the Chicago Tribune that WaterCar wants “to be the Henry Ford of amphibious cars.”

The company even sells a 4×4 version with an LS3 V8 and borrows some parts from the Hummer H1. That one will still do highway speed on land and 40 mph on water. As you can guess, the H1 Panther is the vehicle WaterCar wants to sell to the military as well as to tour outfits and the like.

Both versions of the Panther are awesome and given the chance, I’d love to hoon both. That Python sounds like a dream and my kind of thrill ride. WaterCar has sold a decent number of these things too and they show up on sites like Bring a Trailer every few months or so, including just last week.

What baffles me is WaterCar’s latest pivot.

No Wake Zone

As of early this year, though only now getting media attention, the company is marketing an amphibian called the WaterCar EV. At first, it sounds like a promising idea. It’s pretty much just a boat with retractable wheels tacked on and an EV drive system. It’s an amphibian for today! The marketing also sounds pretty great, from WaterCar:

Introducing the WaterCar EV, a marvel of cutting-edge technology that seamlessly blends sporty performance with luxurious comfort, both on the road and water.

The WaterCar EV is a hybrid amphibious boat combining sporty performance and luxurious comfort. It can transition from land to water in seconds, bringing spontaneity and ease to boating. You can even park it in your garage.

Oh, that sounds pretty sweet!

WaterCar then talks about why the WaterCar EV is different. First, unlike the company’s other amphibians, this one is not fiberglass but is constructed entirely out of an aluminum unibody that’s filled with foam. This structure is then filled with foam and WaterCar says it’s “virtually unsinkable.” The company even says that the WaterCar EV has a V-shaped tri-hull design for a smoother ride in choppy weather.

Wait, hold on a moment. Did the marketing copy up there just say hybrid?

An EV If You Squint

Things start getting really weird when you start digging into the actual specs of the thing.

WaterCar is selling two versions of the WaterCar EV and both of them carry that “EV” moniker even though only one of them is all electric. The first one is the WaterCar EV Hybrid Sport. This one comes with a 115 HP Mercury Pro XS Sport outboard. This is a pure gas engine. On water, the Mercury gets the amphibian up to 35 mph. Eh, that’s not really impressive, but it’s fine enough, I guess.

Then you get to the on-road performance. It uses a 6.7 HP Yamaha electric motor and a 72V battery to propel it to a top speed of 25 mph and a range of 20 miles. In other words, it’s a slow neighborhood electric vehicle. It’s like a floating Changli and can be driven on even fewer roads than a mini truck.

Now, the reason this disappoints me is what WaterCar said earlier: “[B]lends sporty performance with luxurious comfort, both on the road and water.” I’m sorry, but 25 mph on land is not sporty or luxurious. Keep in mind that this electric motor makes less HP than the tiny 125cc engine of a Honda Grom, and then it has to move 18 feet and 2,300 pounds of girth before you pile four people into it. Sporty isn’t the right word.

Also, this isn’t really an EV and even calling it a hybrid might be charitable since both sources of propulsion are completely separate and unrelated. At least in David’s BMW i3 the gas engine is used to power the EV system. This is more or less just a boat with a golf cart strapped to the bottom.

With that said, WaterCar will be selling a WaterCar EV Fully Electric, which has the same drive system for land, but now swaps out the gas outboard for a Mercury Avator 35e outboard with its own batteries. A range on water isn’t quoted with this setup, but I’m not sure it matters. This all-electric outboard is good for just 8 HP and a top speed on water of just 5 mph.

WaterCar has yet to publish a price, but March told NBC Los Angeles that the WaterCar EV will cost north of $100,000. For now, you can place your order after plunking down a $5,000 deposit.

Now I’m asking myself the big question. Who is this for?

The Buyer

WaterCar thinks this would be great for someone who lives very close to a lake and doesn’t want to deal with the logistical problems of owning a boat. The WaterCar EV doesn’t need a trailer and doesn’t require its operator to know how to back up or load a trailer. Its 6.5-foot height also means that it should fit into plenty of garages. March specifically thinks it would be good for someone who lives something like 5 to 10 miles from a lake, provided they don’t have to drive down any fast roads.

I imagine the allure of the WaterCar EV goes down if you have a waterfront property. Most lakefront property owners near me have docks and many have lifts to pull their boats out of the water. They don’t need to worry about driving to the lake. And then anyone who lives further than 10 miles from a lake wouldn’t benefit from a WaterCar EV, either.

Then we end up at the problem our boat-owning readers have noted many times before. This amphibian has merely ok performance as a boat (it can be outrun by partygoers on a pontoon boat) and on-road performance that doesn’t match the marketing. I reckon the best customer for this vehicle will be a beachfront boat rental company or maybe a tour operator. These are super flashy and will get tons of attention.

Otherwise, I’d rather get a WaterCar Panther. The one that just sold on Bring a Trailer went for $102,000, or less than a slower WaterCar EV.

In a sort of hilarious way, WaterCar has come full circle. WaterCar’s mission was to build something with way better performance than the Amphicar. The Panther siblings definitely do that, but the WaterCar EV is actually slower than the Amphicar that inspired this whole venture. Still, credit where credit is due, it’s great someone is still having lots of fun making amphibious vehicles.