Some imagined we’d have flying cars by 2025. Sampriti Bhattacharyya is betting that vision will be closer to the water. Bhattacharyya’s Bay Area startup, Navier, is building hybrid-electric boats that glide above the water, vessels that she believes could not only change commercial transportation, but also military use.
“Why don’t we have boats at scale that are, like, Uber on the water?” she said in an interview with Business Insider. “If you can move things on the water at the cost, speed, and convenience of land and air, you can build large networks of transportation.”
Bhattacharyya’s interest in maritime — which she sees as a “trillion dollar opportunity” — stemmed from her PhD at MIT, where she worked on underwater drones.
Unlike standard boats, Navier’s hybrid-electric vessels, which the company constructs end-to—end, have underwater wings that lift the hull out of the water. Bhattacharyya says the hydrofoiling technique consumes 90% less energy than its traditional gas counterpart and creates a stable glide even in the choppiest of conditions, eliminating seasickness. And her company’s hybrid-electric boats are ten times cheaper to operate, she added.
‘Build machines to understand the universe’
Born and raised in India, Bhattacharyya first immigrated to the US at around 20 years old for an internship at Fermilab, the particle physics research lab outside Chicago. There, she discovered her interest in building ” machines to understand the universe, mostly, and, you know — the planets, the universe, and all of that.”
Bhattacharyya was then awarded a Department of Energy scholarship and a master’s in aerospace engineering from Ohio State University. While completing her degree, she interned at NASA, where she worked on flight-control algorithms and contributed to research on a subcritical nuclear reactor. That work earned her a spot in MIT’s mechanical engineering PhD program, where Bhattacharyya “started actually working on not designing reactors, but on robots for monitoring boiling water reactors,” she said.
Her academic focus shifted in 2014, when Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. “That was a turning point,” she said. “How can we not find an airplane?”
During her PhD, she began building some of the first stealth underwater drones — systems capable of ocean mapping, reconnaissance, pipeline inspection, and other critical functions, Bhattacharyya said.
The work also sparked a key question: “Why do you have to push water if you can glide above?”
‘A high-speed boat that goes from Redwood City to Berkeley’
In late October, Navier announced three hybrid-electric boats, all of which the company builds end-to-end: 30-foot, 80-foot, and 120-foot vessels. The company says each will last for thousands of nautical miles on a single charge, since Navier believes gliding above the water increases its boats’ fuel efficiency.
“Why don’t we have a high-speed boat that goes from Redwood City to Berkeley?” she asked, adding that on one of her boats, “It will take you 20 minutes, rather than one and a half hours.”
The startup isn’t alone in its pursuit of more efficient vessels: Vessev, a startup based in New Zealand, and Candela, based in Stockholm, also make hydrofoil, electric boats.
Navier’s announcement unveiling its bigger boats comes as top military brass have signaled a strong desire to procure tech from startups. Navier already works with the Navy and Defense Department, Bhattacharyya said, which adds Navier to the ever-growing list of dual-use startups — or ones that work with both commercial and government clients.
“You need vessels with a long range because you want to be in the Red Sea, in the South China Sea, and go long distances and have less fueling time,” she added.
Bhattacharyya is vivified by her company’s defense applications: “I came from pretty much nothing,” she said. “To be able to do and build something that can fundamentally change how people will interact with the world is a huge blessing.”