Business
This Southland boat company wants to electrify the Port of Los Angeles
An electric boat company with roots in Torrance is taking steps to bring battery-powered workboats and charging infrastructure to the Port of Los Angeles, where diesel-burning vessels emit tons of carbon dioxide.
Arc Boat Co., a Southern California startup that sells electric boats for recreational use, said it will open a research and development facility at the port in June.
The facility signals a move toward electrification at the nation’s busiest port and marks Arc’s expansion into the commercial sector.
Arc’s promise to deliver an electrified fleet of workboats comes five years ahead of a 2030 deadline set by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to transition to zero-emission equipment.
The twin ports, situated on more than 10,000 acres on San Pedro Bay, rely on heavy-duty cranes, tugboats and trucks to move cargo. Replacing the roughly 2,000 tugboats in the U.S. with electric alternatives could prevent more than 1.6 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to Arc.
“Across the entire marine industry, going electric makes an incredible amount of sense,” Arc co-founder and Chief Executive Mitch Lee said in an interview. “These boats don’t have fumes, and you can cut your operating costs substantially.”
Electric boats require minimal maintenance and zero fuel, an appealing combination for commercial operators who want to save money and consumers looking to enjoy the water, Lee said. Arc’s boats are also quieter and easier to maneuver than traditional boats, he said.
Co-founders Ryan Cook, left, and Mitch Lee sit on an electric boat at Arc Boat Co. on May 12, 2025, in Torrance.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
The electrification of vehicles on the water could soon gain momentum, said Petros Ioannou, an engineering professor at USC who researches transportation technology.
“The main reason for going electric is really the environment,” Ioannou said. “The question is whether they are able to solve the technological and logistical problems” presented by electric boats, including power, range and charging limitations.
Despite the challenges of building a battery capable of propelling a boat, several companies including Navier and X Shore are producing and selling electric vessels. Arc’s business currently revolves around recreational boats for water sports, starting at $268,000.
In a partnership with Portland, Ore.-based shipyard Diversified Marine Inc., Arc plans to retrofit a 26-foot-long truckable tugboat with lithium-ion battery packs and a 600-horsepower drivetrain. The vessel will be the first zero-emission tug to support operations at the Port of Los Angeles, Arc said.
Tugboats are an essential tool at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where they guide larger vessels and move equipment such as barges and cranes.
“Tugs run short, repetitive missions requiring high torque, and start and end at the same home base,” Arc said in a statement announcing its retrofitting project. “Not only does that make them well-suited to going electric, but doing so drastically reduces operating expenses.”
Teaming up with Diversified Marine allows Arc to launch its new workboat in collaboration with several entities that do business at the port, Lee said.
“Diversified already knows how to tap into the port operations and get this vessel to work,” he said. “We’re modernizing their tugboat and deploying it into the Port of L.A., and we’re able to provide charging infrastructure as well.”
A tugboat is retrofitted with an electric motor at Arc Boat Co. on May 12, 2025, in Torrance.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Switching from diesel-powered to electric workboats can save commercial operators roughly 50% on maintenance and fuel costs, Lee said, adding that Arc’s new research and development facility will provide the groundwork to make the switch possible.
The company did not disclose how much money it was putting into the research facility and accompanying charging network, but said it probably will require an investment of less than $10 million.
The facility will sit within a 35-acre research campus operated by the nonprofit AltaSea. It will support prototype development of electric workboats, on-water testing and fleet deployment, Arc said. The company builds its battery packs out of a separate facility in Los Angeles.
“Decarbonization at our ports is a critical step to achieving real, substantive climate progress,” AltaSea said in a statement. “Arc Boat’s new R&D facility and charging infrastructure will help make the Port of L.A. a global model for sustainable maritime operations.”
Launched in 2021 by former Boeing and SpaceX engineers, Arc has a mission to electrify everything on the water, Lee said. Before co-founding Arc with fellow Northwestern alum Ryan Cook, Lee grew up in the Bay Area and frequently boated with his family.
Arc has received more than $100 million in investment funds from California-based venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Lower Carbon Capital, among others. The startup employs 170 people, including experts with backgrounds at electric vehicle companies Rivian and Tesla.
The company did not disclose its annual revenue, but said demand for its boats is high. Two models are available to be delivered nationwide, including the Arc Sport, designed for wake surfing and water skiing; and the Arc One, a luxury cruiser.
Arc is the only electric boat company to build its own battery packs in-house, Lee said.
Although assembly is done in Los Angeles, President Trump’s steep tariffs on U.S. trade partners — including a 145% tax on goods imported from China — have still presented a challenge. The tariff on China has since been reduced to 30%.
“We are definitely impacted by tariffs and the electric vehicle market has heavy ties to Chinese supply chains,” Lee said. “We’re also ahead of the curve and far more vertically integrated than most companies.”
With ambitions to build electric boats capable of hauling cargo and traveling long distances, Arc will need to stay at the forefront of battery development, Ioannou from USC said. Producing its batteries domestically may give Arc an advantage as tariffs disrupt global trade.
“Whether this space will progress in a rapid way will very much depend on the battery technology and availability,” Ioannou said.
“When you go from gasoline to electric, there are certain benefits that you get, but a lot of headaches too,” he said.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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