Diesel outboard engines used to have a lot in common with buses; they were both slow, noisy and to be endured rather than enjoyed. Not anymore – the latest generation of diesel outboards are fast, refined and fun to drive but they still share one thing in common with buses – you wait forever for one to arrive and then three come along at once!
To be fair to the two leading players, Oxe and Cox, their 300hp models, have been around for a couple of years now, and the latest contender to arrive on the scene, Caudwell Marine’s new Axis-drive outboard (see p88), won’t hit the market until later this year. But compared to the geological pace of development prior to that, things are really beginning to motor.
What’s particularly pleasing is that all three of them are start-ups; Cox and Caudwell are based in the UK while Oxe is Swedish. The only downside is that they don’t yet have the scale to mass produce engines so the cost per unit looks disproportionately high – around 2-3 times the price of a comparable petrol outboard.
That still makes sense for military and commercial buyers, who use their boats day in day out all year round, but for leisure boat users, who typically only manage 50 hours per annum, it’s tough to make the sums add up. That’s a crying shame because the potential demand for a smooth, torquey, affordable diesel outboard that burns 30 per cent less fuel than a petrol one would be huge. It may yet happen but in the meantime it l
