Build your next vessel on Safiery’s automotive-led open architecture. The AI wave of the next 1–3 years will hand each boat’s customer — and its economics — to whoever owns the glass and the data. This architecture keeps both with the boat builder.
Three arguments carry that conclusion:
- Low Risk. Every element is proven at volume by automotive, robotics or building automation — marine inherits the reliability of their testing and the affordability of their sunk R&D.
- The open architecture. An open self-describing vessel database puts the intelligence in the boat and the relationship with the builder — not an MFD vendor’s watch or cloud.
- Economics compound over time. Installation labour, warranty callouts and engineering time fall; the boat improves with age and depreciation inverts.
Ten Provocative Questions for Boat Builders in 2026
1 Automotive will keep its customer through AI. Will marine?
The AI wave decides — in the next 1–3 years.
SITUATION BMW ships Apple CarPlay and Android Auto yet still owns the customer — the screen, the operating system, the vehicle data and the services are BMW’s; the phone giants ride on BMW’s glass, on BMW’s terms. Automotive went further and agreed an open standard for the vehicle database itself — COVESA’s Vehicle Signal Specification, a self-describing data tree that lets AI read a vehicle with minimal training.
COMPLICATION Marine went the other way. The boat builder hands the glass to the MFD vendor — and with it the account, the app, the subscription and, quietly, the customer. The AI wave now arriving will lock that ownership in, one way or the other, within the next 1–3 years.
QUESTION Will the boat builder keep the customer through the AI wave — or hand it to an MFD vendor for the life of the boat?
ANSWER Quasar gives the builder what BMW kept: the glass, the data and the relationship. The intelligence lives in the vessel, not a vendor’s cloud — the boat is the database, built on an open semantic model where every data point carries its own plain-language description (fleet.vessel.electrical_loads.AC.watermaker.power). Because each point describes itself, the AI needs almost no training: it answers by voice, interprets the cameras, optimises consumption and flags a failing circuit before it becomes a call-out. Many devices can be configured and re-engineered remotely, cutting installation and warranty costs long after handover; the tamper-proof log travels with the hull and lifts resale. The builder who owns the vessel’s data owns the customer for the life of the boat.
2 New vessels get better over time. Depreciation inverted?
The Digital Twin creates a permanently connected, data-generating asset. Feedback improves the asset.
SITUATION Tesla keeps a live digital replica of every car it sells — hundreds of sensors feeding real-time battery, motor and Autopilot data — and improves the fleet over the air, so the twin sees the problem before the owner does. BMW runs real-time 3D twins on NVIDIA Omniverse: the fleet teaches the factory, and the factory improves the fleet.
COMPLICATION A boat is assumed to decay from launch day. No complete record exists of how it was built, run or maintained, so the market prices in decline — depreciation is the default.
QUESTION Can a new vessel improve with age — inverting its depreciation?
ANSWER Quasar’s Digital Twin is created and populated with dated records during build and commissioning, then stays with the hull as a permanently connected asset — continuous feedback and predictive maintenance, with any sub-standard element caught before it costs the owner convenience or confidence. Because the record is complete and tamper-free, it can be handed to a surveyor at resale as documented evidence of how the vessel was built, run and maintained. Less depreciation, a stronger resale case, an asset that earns its value over its life — and a builder relationship that deepens for as long as the boat is on the water.
3 Can you run your boat with no genset?
DC generation is more than 30% more efficient than AC — enough, in most cases, to charge fast while the main engine is already running, then run the night in silence on batteries alone. No second engine. No exhaust at anchor. No generator droning through dinner.
SITUATION Mild-hybrid cars solved this a decade ago: a 48V Belt Motor Generator bolted to the engine they already have pours high DC power into a lithium battery in minutes, then feeds it back as torque assist — one belt-driven unit, no second machine, a quieter and cheaper drivetrain.
COMPLICATION Boats still carry a second engine just to make power. The genset brings its own fuel system, its own maintenance schedule, exhaust at anchor and a drone through dinner — and AC generation is more than 30% less efficient than DC.
QUESTION Can the genset be deleted entirely?
ANSWER Safiery’s BMG fits a diesel engine as primary or secondary alternator on the crankshaft pulley already there: up to 10 kW of highly efficient charging, and more than 5 kW even at idle, straight into the 48V lithium bank. That is bulk charging in the time it takes to motor out of the anchorage — then everything switches off and batteries and solar carry the night in silence. One integrated, DC-native unit replaces the genset, its fuel, its noise and its upkeep, and the boat runs cleaner, quieter and cheaper for the life of the hull.
4 Can you see lithium battery bank issues 8 weeks ahead?
New technology born in electric vehicles now reads the resistance inside each cell while the battery is live and working — spotting trouble weeks before voltage or temperature ever move. The battery tells you it is getting sick long before it fails.
SITUATION The lithium battery is an EV’s single biggest cost, so carmakers moved a piece of laboratory equipment into the battery itself: Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), capturing up to four resistance values inside every cell — predicting safety events before they happen, tracking ageing cell by cell, and letting the battery run close to its true limit.
COMPLICATION Marine lithium is still judged from the outside, by voltage and temperature — which only move once trouble has already arrived. The industry reflex remains detect, isolate, flood.
QUESTION Can a marine battery warn you of trouble weeks before it fails?
ANSWER Safiery applied NXP’s automotive EIS chipset to marine lithium. The Quasar BMS reads each cell to 10 microohm resolution and flags a developing fault up to eight weeks ahead — protected by provisional patent AU 2026901047 and engineered for the way boats actually store energy: many 48V batteries in a parallel bank, each individually watched. The system moves from detect-isolate-flood to monitor, predict, prevent: full performance and full design life from the battery, safety that keeps you aboard, and a tamper-proof health record that stands behind the warranty and travels with the boat at resale.
5 The advantage of a 48V energy matrix running 12V and 24V devices?
Build the boat’s energy store at 48V, then feed the 12V and 24V equipment from it — and you cut cabling cost, cut heat, and make the inverter/charger last longer. The physics does the work for you.
SITUATION Led by Tesla’s Cybertruck and followed by Ford, GM and Volkswagen, cars are moving from 12V to 48V: four times less current for the same power, up to sixteen times less heat lost in the harness, thinner and cheaper cable — all while staying below the shock-hazard threshold. Proven 12V devices stay aboard, fed by DC-DC conversion from the 48V rail.
COMPLICATION Boats are still wired at 12V and 24V: heavy copper through the hull, waste heat in confined engine spaces, a hard-worked inverter/charger — and no headroom as onboard loads keep climbing. Outboards add a twist: they must draw a small external demand at idle or they choke, then take far more as RPM rises — which needs a variable-power, bidirectional DC-DC to do cleanly.
QUESTION Why build the energy store at 48V when the devices aboard run at 12V and 24V?
ANSWER Safiery builds the vessel around a 48V lithium matrix and steps down to 24V and 12V for the legacy devices — navigation, lighting, pumps — through integrated bidirectional DC-DC. The result: dramatically less copper, far less waste heat, an inverter/charger that runs cooler and lasts longer, and headroom to absorb tomorrow’s loads without rewiring the boat. The Scotty range — 12V/24V→48V, 48V→400V and 48V→48V, all bidirectional — also balances power between hulls on electric catamarans, where each hull carries storage beside its motor/generators, optimising hydrogeneration when the hulls produce different results.
6 Can your helm be frameless glass that never blacks out?
The screen mirros modern EV’s – Thin glass at the front, the compute section is located remotely, somewhere cool. There is one cable between them. A robust automotive developed coax.
SITUATION Cars threw out the bolt-in head unit and the cluster of dials for sweeping frameless glass — Mercedes’ Hyperscreen, the curved panels of Porsche and BMW. The clever part is behind it: the compute lives in a cool, serviceable bay and drives the glass down a single thin SerDes coax (FPD-Link / GMSL) — video forward, touch back, power along — with each display its own node.
COMPLICATION The marine MFD is the opposite: the computer cooks in the ~60°C cavity behind sun-loaded glass, and one black box is both the single point of failure at the helm and the vendor’s grip on the customer.
QUESTION Can the helm be premium frameless glass — and never go dark?
ANSWER Safiery’s QUASAR glass is built on exactly the automotive architecture: frameless bonded tiles — the glass is the only edge you see — deployed identically at the helm, in the saloon or on a cabin wall. The computer sits in a cool machined enclosure a technician can actually reach; one rugged marine coax carries video, touch and power to every tile. Because the system is federated — each screen an independent node — a single failure never blacks out the bridge, and repair is a panel at a time, not a console. Every tile runs open QUASAR software over open protocols (Signal K, MQTT, Matter): the glass is a canvas the builder owns, not a proprietary plotter that owns the customer.
7 Can you measure your power in each DC and AC device to determine anomalies?
Measuring the actual current to each load is easy once it’s designed in — and then the system knows the nav light has failed, even in daylight when no one would notice.
SITUATION Building automation ran through the 1980s on proprietary hard-wired systems — roughly 85% of installed price was labour. Then cheap networked sensors and open protocols (BACnet, Tridium’s Niagara) arrived: install-and-commission cost fell to about 50%, and with today’s AI-and-cloud platforms to roughly 30%. Open-framework challengers went from near-zero to major players in about five years; incumbents wedded to hard-wired architecture saw their dominance more than halve.
COMPLICATION A marine electrical system today looks like building automation forty years ago: hub-and-spoke wiring, a dedicated run to every load, a proprietary hub at the centre — with installation labour around two-thirds of total cost, and every fault a mystery solved by a technician on board.
QUESTION Can every circuit be measured — so every anomaly is caught automatically?
ANSWER Safiery makes the same move buildings made: a single 48V point-of-load bus, an open framework (Matter), and an electrical sensor on every circuit. STAR controllers — already Matter-certified — sense current across solar, inverters, DC-DC, the BMG alternator and every DC and AC rail. Because every load is measured and named, the system learns each one’s normal signature and flags the exception itself: a nav light drawing nothing when it should be lit, a pump cycling too often, a circuit trending toward failure — with load shedding per circuit and diagnostics run remotely, often before a fault becomes a callout. The cost curve mirrors buildings: installed cost more than halving as field labour falls and intelligence rises.
8 Can you steer and sail by wire, with no hydraulics?
Steering that draws almost no energy, weighs a fraction of a hydraulic system, and keeps up to four helm stations in perfect sync — with genuine feel at the wheel, not a synthetic imitation of it.
SITUATION Robotics has commoditised what marine has always paid dearly for: sealed units combining motor, gearbox, dual encoders and closed-loop force drive, produced in volume for robot joints — while off-highway equipment swapped hydraulic cylinders for smart electric actuators built for shock, vibration and salt spray. Electric actuation draws power only while actually moving, reports its true load, and is back-drivable.
COMPLICATION Hydraulic steering must hold pressure continuously whether anything moves or not — eight to twelve kilowatt-hours a day — plus the pump, hoses through both hulls, fluid and bleeding. Multiple helm stations sync poorly, and the feel at the wheel is synthetic or absent.
QUESTION Can a boat steer and sail by wire, with genuine feel and no hydraulics?
ANSWER Safiery’s sail-by-wire replaces hydraulics with compact helm units about 60 mm across — each simultaneously the wheel’s position encoder and its feel motor — driving electric rudder actuators through a single safety-certified controller. Up to four helm stations run servo-synchronised, with TAKE HELM handing authority cleanly between them. The feel is measured, not invented: rudder load is sensed at the blade and replayed as resistive torque at the active wheel — real weather helm, real load building in a gust. Each hull’s actuator, sensor, bus and battery feed is independent, and with all power lost the actuator back-drives so the emergency tiller still works. Steering runs on under 2 kWh a day; the hardware is roughly 85% cheaper than incumbent hydraulic steer-by-wire — and once the certified wheel-to-rudder foundation exists, autopilot, auto-sailing and auto-docking are pure software. The investment is made once, in the wire.
9 Can your boat dock itself — safely — in the dark and the rain?
Say which side, hold the button, and watch the boat crab sideways onto the berth — seeing the dock the way a self-driving car sees the road, with the human hand always one release away from taking over.
SITUATION Waymo — millions of fully driverless miles in — fuses cameras with radar and lidar precisely so the vehicle keeps seeing when one input is blinded by glare, rain or darkness. Millimetre-wave automotive radar measures range and closing speed as physics, not inference; a decade of automotive volume has made it cheap, rugged, weatherproof and CAN-native.
COMPLICATION Docking is the most stressful ninety seconds of an owner’s day — and it happens in exactly the conditions that defeat a camera. One lens is not a safety case; the serious autonomy players build on sensor fusion and redundancy.
QUESTION Can a boat dock itself safely when vision fails — with the human always in command?
ANSWER QUASAR auto-docking fuses a 360° camera view of berth, piles and cleats with 77 GHz automotive radar — a module carrying five distinct radar modes, from 200 mm at the fender to 40 m across the harbour, placing the dock to about 100 mm in darkness, rain and glare. An electric catamaran is close to the ideal platform: twin widely-spaced shafts, fly-by-wire rudders and a bow thruster give control in every direction, so the boat crabs bodily sideways onto the berth. The safety architecture follows every QUASAR module: the AI proposes, certified deterministic control disposes, and a radar anti-collision watchdog wired straight to that controller involves no AI at all. The skipper picks the side by voice and holds a button for the whole manoeuvre — lift a finger and the boat is instantly manual. It trains on the skipper’s own recorded dockings, berth by berth, the home marina becoming a remembered manoeuvre — riding entirely on hardware the boat already carries, because the actuation was paid for once, in the wire.
10 – The Finale – Should your systems live behind a wall, or in a hybrid cloud?
The boat needs to run with no internet, and keep some video entirely private — yet the build, the engineering and the sea trial are transformed by being connected. The answer isn’t one or the other. It’s both, done deliberately.
SITUATION IBM was the definition of the walled garden — until 2018, when it bought Red Hat and bet the company on hybrid cloud and open source, reasoning that no single company could build the future alone inside its own walls. In March 2026 it doubled down, completing the $11 billion acquisition of Confluent to stream live, trusted data across on-premises and cloud for AI models and agents.
COMPLICATION Marine systems began as walled gardens too — closed hardware, closed software, closed data. Yet the boat must run with no internet and keep private video entirely aboard, while the build, the engineering and the sea trial are transformed by being connected.
QUESTION Wall or cloud — where should a vessel’s systems live?
ANSWER Both, with the boundary drawn on purpose. Quasar’s hybrid-cloud architecture keeps the vessel fully self-reliant: the boat is the database, everything essential works offline — at anchor, offshore, mid-ocean — and private video never touches the cloud unless the owner chooses. When connectivity is there, the cloud earns its place, most of all during build, engineering and sea trial: live commissioning data streams ashore, so engineering that once happened on board, by hand, one boat at a time is done remotely, in parallel, informed by every other hull in the fleet — a realistic target of designing and engineering a vessel’s systems in around a third of today’s time. The wall gave control; the pure cloud gave scale; the deliberate hybrid gives both — privacy and self-reliance for the owner, engineering capacity multiplied for the builder.
We have an answer to each of these questions with proven hardware and software.
We call the system QUASAR.
To discuss these questions and your application,
Come to our Stand
1. 315 at IBEX 2026
