Moving One Motor Between Multiple Kayaks and SUPs

Most paddlers who get serious about electric propulsion eventually end up in the same place: they have more than one boat, and they want to motorize more than one of them without spending motor money twice. The conventional answer has always been to buy separately for each hull, which is fine if you have an unlimited budget and no objections to redundancy. We built the Bixpy K-1 system around a different philosophy entirely. One motor should be able to do real work across your whole fleet, and the engineering should make that genuinely easy rather than just technically possible.

The way we solved this starts with the motor itself. The K-1 weighs 2.8 lbs including its cable and hardware. Its full footprint is 9.05 inches long by 3.6 inches wide by 6.32 inches tall. That is not incidental to the multi-boat concept, it is central to it. A motor this compact and light is not a fixture. It is gear, the same way a good paddle or a quality PFD is gear, something you move between outings and boats without a second thought. What stays on each boat is the adapter, which is the hull-specific hardware. The motor connects to those adapters through a standardized quick-release interface that detaches with 4 nuts and bolts, and once you have adapters installed on each of your boats, the motor simply rotates through them.

The adapter catalog is where the depth of this system becomes clear. We have built more than 30 K-1-compatible adapters, and they cover mounting interfaces that span almost everything in the personal watercraft market. For SUPs and kayaks with fin boxes, the fin adapter series is the cleanest possible install: the adapter slides into the fin slot and replaces the center fin, and no tools touch the boat. For paddlers with multiple boards running different fin standards, the SUP Adapter Bundle packages the most common options together so compatibility is not something you have to think about. For inflatables, where you are not threading hardware through a hull, the Peel and Bond Fin Box Adapter handles the install without mechanical fastening.

Fishing kayaks are where the Rod Holder Adapter earns its place. The overwhelming majority of production fishing kayaks ship with at least two rod holders already installed, and this adapter drops directly into any standard tube. There is no drilling, no modification, and no boat-specific engineering required. For boats with T-Track on deck (a standard that runs across a large part of the angler kayak market) the RailBlaza Universal Hexx Adapter attaches to the track and can be configured as a fixed mount or set up for steering. Boats with a traditional flat transom take the Transom Adapter, which includes an adjustable aluminum pipe for depth and a full tiller steering setup with both a 12-inch and 24-inch handle option. For kayaks that do not fit cleanly into any of those categories, the Universal Kayak Adapter uses adjustable pipe arms to work around different stern slopes and configurations, it is the more involved install, but it covers the gaps.

The pedal drive adapters deserve their own mention because the concept is particularly well-suited to multi-use paddlers. For boats running Hobie Impulse, Native Watercraft, and Hoodoo pedal systems, the dedicated drop-in adapters work by pulling the pedal unit out of the drive well and inserting the motor adapter in its place. Nothing is drilled, nothing is permanently changed, and the pedal drive goes right back in whenever you want it. For anglers who fish tidal water and want pedals when they are working structure and motor power when they are covering ground against a current, this is a genuinely useful capability. Pod-style drive systems have equivalent dedicated adapters that work on the same principle. All of the adapter hardware across the catalog is waterproof, dirt-proof, and built with marine-grade stainless steel components rated for both salt and freshwater so whatever adapter is sitting on your boat between sessions is not going to corrode or degrade.

Can I Use One Bixpy Motor on Both a Kayak and a SUP?

This is one of the most common questions we hear, and the answer is yes. Can you use one Bixpy motor on both a kayak and a SUP? As long as each boat has a compatible adapter installed, the motor transfers between them without any modification to the motor itself. The fin box adapters handle the SUP side of the equation for virtually every modern paddleboard with a standard fin system, and the fishing kayak takes whatever adapter matches its specific mounting hardware. The motor connects the same way regardless of which adapter it meets.

The motor produces 33 lbs of thrust paired with the smaller PP-378 V4 Power Pack and 38 lbs with the larger PP-768, both generated through a brushless motor running a direct-drive propeller inside the Bixpy PowerShroud duct. The enclosed duct is not just a housing, it functions the way a shrouded turbine does, capturing the water column and accelerating it through the motor rather than letting energy dissipate off the blade tips. The result is more thrust per watt than an open-propeller design of equivalent diameter, which matters when you are pushing different hull shapes with different resistance profiles on different days. The PP-378 V4 runs approximately 75 minutes at top speed and up to 10 hours at lower speeds. The PP-768 doubles the energy storage for full-day use and unlocks the full 38-lb thrust figure. Both packs float, which is useful when you are transferring gear between boats on the water.

For paddlers who want more flexibility on the power side, the K-Power Module opens the K-1 to virtually any standard 24V lithium battery. The module includes the control system, Bluetooth remote, kill switch, and cabling to turn a third-party battery into a fully integrated Bixpy power source. This matters for long-distance trips, overnight camping runs, or anyone who already owns 24V systems and wants to consolidate charging. The motor and power components carry an IP-67 rating and are depth-rated to 100 feet, so moving the same unit between a saltwater bay kayak and a freshwater river boat on back-to-back days does not require any special handling.

We have built adapters for boats from Hobie, Old Town, Wilderness Systems, Jackson, Bonafide, Feelfree, Native Watercraft, Eddyline, Pelican, NuCanoe, Viking, Vibe, Perception, Riot, iRocker, Isle, BOTE, Sea Eagle, Aquaglide, Advanced Elements, and a long list of others. The K-1 is the third generation of Bixpy motors following the J-1 and J-2, and since 2017 our motors have gone out on tens of thousands of personal watercraft. The adapter library has grown with the install base and when a new drive system or hull platform reaches meaningful market adoption, we build for it. The full catalog and the adapter finder are at bixpy.com.