Coventry University and Duck Tours Limited KTP 24_25 R3

Duck Tours is building an electric amphibious vehicle for its waterway tours, and this project will capture what passengers and tour operators actually need from it before the design is finalised. The problem is straightforward: electric amphibious vehicles are new, and nobody has systematically studied how passengers experience them or what tour operators require to run them efficiently. Without this knowledge, the vehicle risks being technically sound but commercially impractical—too noisy, too slow to recharge, or awkward to board. The project embeds user feedback directly into Duck Tours’ agile production process, so the final digital design reflects real-world use from day one. If successful, this approach could change how small tour operators adopt electric vehicles. The immediate impact is on Duck Tours’ own fleet, but the method—capturing operator and passenger requirements before production—could apply to other niche electric transport systems, from harbour ferries to heritage railway replacements. This is applied, commercially focused research with a clear practical endpoint: a vehicle that works for the people who use it, not just the engineers who build it.