The Icon is an all-electric boat shaped by BMW in collaboration with boatbuilder Tyde

BMW brought a new form of transportation to the 76th Cannes Film Festival. The Icon is an all-electric boat developed in collaboration with Tyde, billed as ‘a new kind of flagbearer for sustainable mobility on water’.

The 13.15m vessel splices BMW battery tech with Tyde’s foiling technology, creating a craft that raises itself out of the water at speed to avoid drag and increase range.

The Icon all-electric boat

Six batteries sourced from BMW’s trailblazing i3 provide 240kWh of power to twin 100kW motors, enough to give the boat a range of 50 nautical miles and a top speed of 30 knots (100km and 55 km/h respectively).

BMW isn’t the first company to pair with an electric boat maker. Polestar’s batteries found their way into Candela’s C-8, a sleek hydrofoil designed by the Swedish boat builder. Where The Icon differs in its superstructure.

BMW has helped shape a deluxe, luxurious cabin experience, building on the smooth, near-silent propulsion system. Drawing on the sound architecture deployed in its high-end cars, like the BMW i7, shown here, The Icon has its own on-board ‘soundscape’, composed by regular BMW collaborator Hans Zimmer and delivered through a Dolby Atmos powered system. 

The prism-shaped cabin combines extensive glazing and folded metal forms, with unrivalled transparency, giving passengers an extraordinary view from above the waves. The interior contains rotating upholstered seats and a big-screen entertainment system. 

Cannes was an appropriate waterside venue for The Icon’s debut, with its connotations of starry glamour and BMW’s own long-term relationship with cinema and the big screen – the company’s new short film, The Calm, starring Pom Klementieff and Uma Thurman, is the first in the BMW Film series for eight years.  

For now, The Icon is a one-off, but it shows a desire to apply the lessons learned in developing electric cars to new sectors of mobility, particularly luxurious ones.

BMW.com