Pioneering with passion

For Giovanna Vitelli, yachting is very much a family affair. As the Vice President of the Azimut|Benetti Group, she is following in the footsteps of her father, Paolo Vitelli, who founded the Azimut brand and who has led the shipyard on a path to becoming a builder of boats at all levels of the yachting spectrum, from the 12.9-metre Verve 42 to custom superyachts over 100 metres in length.

At the heart of this family business lies a family passion – the Vitelli family has always held a connection with the sea – and it is with this in mind that Paolo Vitelli teamed up with the late, long-time Azimut Benetti designer Stefano Righini to create the perfect Vitelli family yacht. The result was an innovative 37-metre design under the model name B.Yond that maximised internal volume while minimising length, which not only meant the yacht could creep into family favourite harbours and anchorages but also that its footprint, in every sense of the word, was reduced. Indeed, the model – launched in 2022 – marks a significant evolution in the shipyard’s smaller-yacht line-up, with a Siemens Energy-designed hybrid electric drivetrain offered as an option. “The Siemens Energy collaboration has very much been a vision of my father – he really wanted to take the risk, which you do when you are pioneering this kind of installation, especially on a semi-custom boat rather than a full custom boat,” Giovanna Vitelli says

It’s the idea of creating smaller hybrid superyachts that are available to a wider range of people – rather than individuals pursuing hybrid tech because they believe in the technology and are prepared to make the financial investment – that stands out, because it symbolises a nascent trend in an area of the market where such options are currently rare. Hybrid diesel-electric yachts have been around since the early 2000s – in 2006 Benetti’s 65 metre yacht Ambrosia was its first to feature Azipod pod drives coupled to a diesel-electric drivetrain. In 2009 came Royal Huisman’s hybrid sailing yacht Ethereal, and in the last decade there have been significant launches from all the key shipyards, from Heesen’s 50-metre hybrid Home to Feadship’s much-lauded 83 metre Savannah, and increasingly many more besides.

At the other end of the scale in the production yacht market, there has been a similar timeline of development. There was the hybrid Magellan 50, a 15-metre production model with naval architecture by Dixon Yacht Design launched in the late 2000s which became the first yacht to be certified under classification society RINA’s Green Plus notation, or the Mochi Craft Long Range 23, a 23.7-metre yacht with a hybrid option first launched in 2008 after being developed by the Ferretti Group, which had acquired the brand in 2001.

“In the past we had this pioneering approach and the will to get into these technologies,” Vitelli enthuses. “I think these are the efforts that companies that are leaders in their industry have to make, because this is the only way you can prepare yourself for when the technology becomes mature.”

There has been, however, a notable gap, particularly in the 30 to 40 metre size range. While that is starting to change – Sanlorenzo has built hybrid versions of its SL106 and SL86 models with systems designed by e-Motion Hybrid, for example; Numarine unveiled a hybrid version of its 30.75-metre 30XP; and sailing yacht builders like Baltic Yachts and Southern Wind have built or are building sailing yachts around the 30-metre mark with hybrid electric drivetrains – such boats are few and far between. Partly that is down to the availability of suitable systems. For small production boats which don’t need as much power for propulsion or hotel load, there are several options now available, while at the other end of the spectrum the larger yachts had more flexibility for systems and drives ported in and developed from commercial applications.

For Vitelli, the results of shipyard’s continual push toward hybrid technology suggest there is a growing change of mindset with potential owners, even at the smaller end of the size range. “The Siemens Energy hybrid propulsion option on the B.Yond 37-metre is more expensive that the conventional option, and the different is not insignificant – but out of the several hulls we have already sold, half the owners have chosen hybrid,” Vitelli says. “I take this as a sign of big interest from clients in general – it’s no longer about pushing the technology and trying to find customers who are passionate enough about it to make the investment and take the risk.”

It all feeds into Vitelli’s belief that collaboration between shipyards will take yachting further toward net-zero. “Our industry is relatively small and it makes sense for the shipyards to do research together at a European or even global level so that we all benefit from the new technologies,” she says. “We need to express the professionalism and reliability of the superyacht sector, and we need to partner to show commitment. And given how much worse the seas are getting compared to when I was a child, we should not struggle against the threat of regulations but we should work to make them happen. There is a general push of society toward having more care for the environment, especially in the younger generation,” she concludes, “and the changes we see in owners are not down to things like a high cost of fuel, but because owners increasingly have more consciousness about the topic of environment.”