BACK STORY: Foil Drive

Unless something monumentally dramatic happens in the meantime, the rise of assisted foil systems will no doubt be the biggest story in foiling for 2024. Busting down the door of this new tech were Foil Drive…

Foil Drive, who’d seen success with their Gen1 system but then exploded when their Gen2 system hit the market. To find out a little more about how this all came about, we had a chat with co-founder, Ben Jamieson.

Starting at the start then, Ben! It was initially Paul (Martin – Co-founder, CEO & Chief Designer) who had the idea to create Foil Drive. Talk to us about Paul’s background, and how that initial idea took shape and why…

Paul is a tinkerer at heart. With a background in aviation, model aircraft, commercial drones alongside a passion for surfing, it wasn’t long before electric motors started being fitted to surfboards. A nasty mountain bike crash as a kid left him with a shoulder that couldn’t paddle as hard anymore, and a couple of kids and a previous business made time in the water a precious resource. When foiling came along it was a pretty natural and rapid evolution to add a small, lightweight, super-efficient electric motor to get the most out of his time foiling.

Having built full powered jetboards, surf assist and then e-foils, it just wasn’t ticking the boxes for the more natural feeling surf foil, so his attention turned to how small and light he could go. Drones and aircraft simply have to be lightweight, strong and as efficient as possible. This obsession to detail and design carried straight across into designing the first efficient paddle assist systems for his surf foils. This all continued to evolve into today’s Gen2 edition of the Foil Drive Assist range, where it’s the smallest, lightest and most efficient system possible.

And tell us how you got involved, and what experience you brought to the table…

I knew Paul through our mutual model aircraft hobby, and we also share a passion for aviation and the outdoor sports and adventure world. Having worked together in the commercial drone industry as well, when the opportunity for a new challenge based in water sports arose, we jumped in with both feet! We had worked together on design, development, testing and delivery of some pretty high end projects in the past, and we knew we worked well together. In simple terms, Paul dreams, designs and makes the thing and I make sure people know it exists, what it is and how to get it.

How did the initial concept for the Foil Drive system look? Was it vastly different from what we see today with the Gen2 system?

Oh yeah of course, it was closer to the Gen1 Assist and Assist PLUS I guess, with a waterproof box on top a giant big Starboard Hypernut 3-in-1crossover board! With almost a fifth of the power of the current Gen2, it was still plenty of boost to get us flying on the SUP foil in the surf. Heaps of different controller types, motor designs, propeller concepts and mounting components were designed from the ground up and tested in the early days. More late nights in the workshop, thrust test in the pool, days at the dock with the laptop out and long days in the surf than we care to count. Not to mention a pile of busted up electronics from the harsh salty conditions; waterproofing and reliability always being some of the biggest challenges in the marine engineering environment.

How did you go about funding these initial concepts? Was there a significant leap of faith with this?

Like any novel idea that starts to work out, there is always that day or that moment where you stop and think, “maybe there’s something to this”. I recall this day after a session at the local spot when we were swarmed with interest in the carpark from the other local foilers, quite a few of whom now work for Foil Drive.

Starting out small, continuing to make more prototypes and making a few kits for the locals very quickly became a decision for us to go all in and quit our day jobs, launch websites, hire staff and build out our own manufacturing facility locally in Adelaide, Australia. We built it up quickly and efficiently, using every piece of previous experience, knowledge, hour of the day and early successes to get the concept off the ground, and into what it is today.

So how did things develop from that first concept into the first usable system?

To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur! The first units were totally usable by ourselves and our local mates that we could coach through looking after them and keeping them sea-worthy. The main challenges again were making them ocean-proof, surf proof and easy enough for someone on the other side of the world to be able to use and maintain. Little did we know the first three legit orders on the website would take the product global immediately!

What was that feeling like, when you realised it works, and you had something people were going to want…

Off the back of a work trip for the previous job, Paul stopped in at SurfFX on the Gold Coast and showed Guy Linton one of the early protos. He rode it and was blown away by the fact such a tiny motor and battery could get him on foil so easily in the flatwater. The video with Paul’s excited voice in seeing someone in the sport and industry enjoy his creation and see the potential to share this with others is pretty special I think. Another key moment was delivering the first paid order to Dominic Hoskyns in Oman (now director of Foil Drive Europe) and him calling in so much excitement and joy at the future fun this thing would bring him as well as countless other early moments in the surf with locals and family getting their first taste of foiling. This is what really urged us on to make it available to the masses. We are actually putting the finishing touches on a documentary about the history of Foil Drive so far featuring a heap of these moments which is going to be amazing to be able to share with everyone!

We’ll look out for it! So once the Gen1 was out there, how did you go about defining the scope for Gen2? 

The form factor and mounting of the Gen2 was kinda always the original goal. Some key elements we knew we wanted to achieve were the clean deck (especially for prone), greater run times, more thrust for the smaller performance gear that the sport was moving rapidly into and much more refined design and user experience. This was all underpinned by the same performance focus with efficiency and lightweight at its core.

Well it’s clearly proved a hit globally. Did you anticipate the appetite for this system once you knew what it was capable of?

The Gen1 gave us a great building block to understand the average foiler and how popular such a revolutionary product like this could be. I think the Gen2 launch was timed with a super exciting period of foiling where lots of new gear was coming out, the sport was starting to get some traction and see lots of new entrants but was also a point where lots of people were discovering how hard it can be to learn and progress in some conditions. The Foil Drive was the perfect tool to fast-track fun times on foil. The Gen1 proved it was a good idea, and the Gen2 made it even more attractive and available to all. Not going to lie though, we had a tough time keeping up with demand in those first few months! It was a massive shift from Gen1 to Gen2 in every way.

Tell us a little bit about the team behind the scenes. How many of you are there at HQ, and then who else do you have working elsewhere? 

As always, the team behind it all are the real heroes that get everyone out on the water with Foil Drives and keep them stoked to be out there. We have grown to a staff of over 30 now, with most in the HQ and factory in Adelaide, a couple in Perth and Sydney, Netherlands, Italy and the US. It’s been a crazy ride for the team, and they just keep going from strength to strength, always improving everything we do right from idea, design, testing, manufacturing and assembly, warehouse and dispatch, backend business operations, customer support, service and warranty, events and team. It still blows us away how much the team does just so we can all enjoy a toy on the water. We are so incredibly proud of the awesome guys and girls (and pups) we have in the team.

Tell is a little more about HQ. Do you manage to get in the water on lunchbreaks?

Yeah so HQ is in Adelaide, Australia only about 15 minutes from the water, which is great for testing and riding. Local spots for us include the marina for protected testing (and filming how-to videos), a reef break and then a heap of big beaches and a few more reef breaks about an hour away. In summer we get super reliable wind so the crew love an evening prone DW run in the gulf with a standard SW run anywhere from 14-40km possible right near home. Like most in the business will say, not enough lunch time runs but there is always some gear missing from the rack and a battery or two on charge. Any new foil gear that rocks up, and it’s like seagulls to hot chippies!

You’ve helped define the emergence of assisted foiling, which is now pretty much a discipline in its own right. Where do you go from here? 

Yeah it’s pretty cool to say we invented a new sport. Foil Driving is so many things to so many people and I think that’s the really cool part about it. For some it’s an assist for paddling a SUP, for others a safety device for winging offshore, a session saver or a practice and development tool and for others it’s a whole new way of looking at a foil craft and an ocean playground. The world is full of opportunities if you have the right tools in the car when you rock up at the beach. I think we are only just getting started for where Foil Driving can and will go and similar the etiquette campaign we have been pushing, we should all use our Foil Drives to get creative!

And finally… can we get any sneaky intel on what Gen3 might look like?!

The use of the rare and elusive “Un-Obtainium” special material that allows for endless battery life, zero weight, endless smiles and longest rides… Shh! Nah, seriously though, there are some pretty cool projects in the works for the future to improve upon and enhance the current gear, making it even more versatile, multi-purpose and greater performance. The colabs and partnerships with all your favorite foil and board brands are getting really exciting and Paul is just an ideas machine and certainly isn’t done yet and can’t help himself but to leave no stone unturned. Exciting times ahead!