PARIS, France — The Vedettes de Paris river boat tour company has been doing tours on the Seine River for nearly 50 years, and marketing director Julie Devernay said people can take tours down the Seine on electric boats.
“We are a company since 1976,” Devernay said. “It is one of the main companies on the Seine. We have five boats, and three of those are electric boats.”
Those electric boats will be used during the 2024 Olympic opening ceremony on July 26. Instead of being held in a traditional stadium, the opening ceremony will take the form of a 4-mile-long floating procession down the Seine River.
The company spent 12 months to retrofit older gas boats with electric engines that have 550 kilowatt-hour battery banks and, like electric cars, can be charged up in about 15 minutes.
“It’s the retrofit of the boats to transform them and switch them from gasoline to electric,” Devernay said. “It’s the same hull, the same boat, we have just installed electric batteries equivalent to roughly 10 electric cars in terms of charging power.“
On the dock, the company installed super chargers that will help them be part of the 2024 Olympics' bigger plan to be more sustainable.
“This is the main goal for the city to get neutral and the most sustainable Games as we can get,” Devernay said.
The company said their electric boats save money on diesel and maintenance, reduce their carbon footprint, don’t smell like gas and are a lot more quiet than gas boats. Vedettes hopes to be 100% carbon neutral and plans to make all their boats electric in the future.
The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics will be held Friday, July 2 Instead of being held in a traditional stadium, the opening ceremony will take the form of a 4-mile-long floating procession down the Seine River.
NBC will begin live coverage of the ceremony at 10 a.m. MT on Friday, July 26. The opening ceremony will be broadcast on NBC, Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com and the NBC/NBC Sports apps. Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning will serve as hosts of NBC’s opening ceremony coverage. "Today" hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will also be part of the broadcast team.