Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Tuesday, the 11th of March.

Imagine whizzing down the River Thames in central London on a boat which looks as though it's on stilts and is powered 100% by electricity and doesn't have a big wake and therefore doesn't erode the river banks or cause problems for other river users.

That sounds unlikely, but I'm talking to Mikhail Marlberg of Kandala, a Swedish firm, which is actually doing something very similar already in the archipelago

of islands around Sweden's capital Stockholm.

Hello there.

How does it work?

We've built a ferry which uses hydrofoil technology, so wings under the water that generate lift

at a certain speed.

So once we hit 80 knots, the whole boat rises up above the water and there's no friction

of water against the hull.

And that reduces the energy consumption by roughly 80% and allows us to go both fast and far on

electricity.

Some people may have travelled on jet foil or hydrofoil technology in, for instance,

the Greek islands. You're going along 18 knots, so 21 miles an hour approximately, and you

suddenly lift up, reduce the drag, and it seems quite magical. You're flying along.

Yes, you are. So once you're flying at the service

speed of 25 knots, the noise of the waves start to disappear and you just have this silent

electric ride. The big perk is that you can't really get seasick on this craft as well. You

mentioned the older hydrofoils of former eras and those tend to be pitching and rolling a little bit

in heavy sea states.

We do have a digital flight controller on board, a computer that senses the waves in front of both

and adjusts the hydrofoils in real time.

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