The story of E-Force Marine begins the way a lot of good Miami stories do: on the water, staring down a gas engine that needed replacing.
It was the early days of the pandemic, and Al Haghayegh, a lifelong entrepreneur, needed to repower his Tiara. Rather than swap in another set of gas motors, he started asking a different question: why not go electric? That moment became the founding act of E-Force Marine.
A Family Business, From the Engine Room Up
E-Force Marine is, in the truest sense, a family company. Al is the founder and CTO, his son Arman is co-founder and CSO, and his daughter Roxana serves as co-founder and CMO. Underlying all of it is GlowbackLED, the family’s custom lighting manufacturing company, which supplies the engineering resources and 3D printing capabilities now central to E-Force Marine’s build process.
Before committing to building their own vessel, the family spent three years on Biscayne Bay validating their technology, running a converted Tiara and a retrofitted 24-foot Shamrock as test beds. The performance held up. At roughly half the horsepower of the original gas setup, the Tiara matched its old top speed, while running quieter, producing no fumes, and requiring significantly less maintenance. That last point matters more than it might seem; many Miami boaters are out once every few weeks, and gas engines don’t sit well. “The last thing you want to do when you have people coming over is open up the engine hatch to get the boat going,” Arman says.
From Test Bed to Flagship
Those years of testing shaped E-Force Marine’s flagship product, the Aurora E30, a 30-foot electric catamaran designed around their proprietary drive system from the ground up. Hull geometry, hydrodynamics, and propeller sizing are all optimized for electric, including larger propellers that take advantage of the higher torque electric motors produce.
The design is intentionally conventional. “We wanted to make a boat that people in Miami are comfortable with,” Arman says. “This is the boating capital of the world. We know what people like to do here.” For buyers concerned about range, an optional hybrid configuration pairs the electric motors with a diesel generator, extending range to roughly 190 miles.
The hull molds are 3D-printed in-house and finished via vacuum infusion, meaning modifications that might otherwise take months can be handled in weeks.
The Longer View
Commercial operators and boat clubs have taken notice, operating costs for electric vessels can run around 70% lower than comparable gas-powered boats, which changes the math significantly for anyone running a fleet.
The company’s longer ambition extends beyond the Aurora E30. A 40-foot model is in the plans, and the boat-building program itself is designed as proof of concept for eventually licensing their drive systems to established manufacturers, several of whom have already reached out. The strategy is to get the boats on the water, accumulate operating hours, and let the data do the talking.
For now, E-Force Marine is running demos on their converted vessels for anyone curious to come out. Some weekends they take the boats to Nixon Sandbar or Fowey Rock and invite people alongside. Almost every time, Arman says, someone pulls up and asks, “Is this really electric?”
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