I bought the motor at the Defender Spring sale this year. So I have had it for one season. Now the answers to your questions.

1. I use it to push a RIB Lite 310 (~10' long). There are normally two people in the dinghy along with "stuff". Call that a typical load of a bit over 400 lbs. The run to my mooring from the dinghy dock is almost exactly 1/2 nautical mile. The motor has plenty of power to push the loaded dinghy to the boat against a 25 knot head wind with 2-3 foot seas (one of the wettest rides I have ever had - the cat did NOT appreciate being brought along on that trip).

2. My motor is the 1003S with the 400 watt battery. The current model comes with a 520 watt battery. My motor will accept the 520 watt battery which would give about 30% greater endurance than the battery I have.

3. I generally run at an output of approximately 225 watts which pushes the dinghy along at about 3.2-3.3 knots on flat water and a 2.8-3 knots if there is a bereeze and a bit of light shop. Maximum output for the motor is just under 1,000 watts, so I have plenty of power in reserve. Under normal conditions, I use approximately 1/5th of a charge to run to the boat and back. I generally run a bit faster returning from the boat, so power consumption is skewed toward the return trip.

4. The motor will NOT plane my boat. With a typical load (2 people with stuff), the motor will push my dinghy to about 4.5 knots. With just me in the dink, I can hit 4.8 knots.

5. The display on the motor shows the current power setting, range at the setting, speed measured by GPS and percent of power remaining. At 225 watts, my motor thinks it can go about 5.5 nm on a charge.

6. The charger is AC only. It draws 48 watts and takes about an hour to replace 40 watts in the battery. Running off n inverter, you would probably draw about 52-55 watts from your battery bank (i.e., about 4.5 amp hours per hour of charging).

The motor weighs just over 28 lbs with the battery making up about 16 pounds of that and the control tiller being about 2 pounds. The battery and tiller come off easily leaving just the down-leg, which weighs about 10 pounds. To take the motor off the dinghy at the boat I remove the tiller and battery and then put the down-leg on my stern bracket.

The way we use out boat, I take the motor home at the end of each trip and charge it at home.

So far I quite like the motor. It is light and quiet. I like the fact that all you do to start it is push the on button then turn the tiller handle. Reverse is achieved by turning the tiller handle the other way from forward (no gear box). I particularly like the motor for close maneuvering around the dinght dock since you can run at very low power (i.e., very slowly) and reverse thrust in a second or less.

The only down sides of the motor are the initial price and the price of a replacement battery (~$600 or so). I also don't like to leave the motor on the dinghy because there is no way to secure the battery or tiller arm to the motor.

So far tis season I have run maybe 60 miles with this motor. I estimate that I have spent about $4 on electrons so far. On the plus side, I haven't gotten a bad batch of electrons yet and they don't go bad in the battery either.