Foil Assist

What is a foil assist?

A foil assist is a compact electric drive that bolts onto the hydrofoil setup you already own: a small motor on the mast or inside the board, a battery of a few hundred watt-hours, and a remote, usually handheld (Duotone’s is a watch with a finger ring, and FLITELab builds its buttons into the deck). The motor has one main job, the takeoff. It carries you onto the wing without a wave, without wind and without a boat tow, and once the board is flying you glide and pump under your own steam. Plenty of riders leave the throttle alone for the rest of the session. Foil Drive, the Australian company that invented the category, describes it as a short burst of thrust followed by pure gliding, and that is what this gear is for.

That is a different proposition from an eFoil, where a battery of 0.8 to 2.55 kWh, depending on model and pack, and a motor that runs the whole time keep the board flying. An assist system adds roughly 3.5 to 8.8 kg to your gear, depending on the maker and the battery (the 3.5 kg is FLITELab’s AMPJet with one battery, the 8.8 kg Manta’s TakeOff Flow, a 6.8 kg main unit with its battery plus the 2 kg motor), and the batteries range from 141 to 864 Wh. The payoff is that your board still behaves like a surf foil: light, lively, and on a wave or a pump it glides the way a full eFoil board never can with its extra mass.

Foil assist has become one of the busiest corners of the foil market. Alongside the Australian pioneer Foil Drive, Duotone, Fliteboard and several smaller builders have joined in, and Lift covers the same ground with a hybrid eFoil. This guide walks through the 2026 field using each manufacturer’s own published data, re-read on the makers’ pages and stores on 5 October 2026.

How does it work? Three build types

Three basic layouts are on the market, and your choice mostly comes down to which set of trade-offs you can live with. Each one puts the motor, and the battery, in a different place.

1. A retrofit pod on your existing mast. The classic solution. A streamlined motor pod clamps to your mast, and the battery stays under the board, not on the deck. Foil Drive bolts its battery unit between board and mast and runs a cable down to the pod of its Retro Fit mount. Manta Foils fits its main unit between the board’s foil track and the mast, above the universal pod, and on the TakeOff Evo the battery can ride in an optional backpack instead. The Stoke Foil Boost carries its battery on the drive unit, which sits at the top of the mast. The advantage: your whole quiver stays in play, and the system can be moved to a different mast later on.

2. An integrated mast. Here the motor is built into the mast at the factory. It is hydrodynamically cleaner, but it commits you to a dedicated mast. The Duotone Foil Assist works this way with an 84 cm eMast, and Foil Drive also sells integrated masts for foils from AFS, AK, Armstrong, AXIS, Cloud IX, CODE, Foil Cedrus, F-ONE, NORTH, RRD, Slingshot and Unifoil.

3. A jet inside the board. Fliteboard’s FLITELab AMP system keeps the motor off the mast entirely and builds a sealed water jet, the AMPJet, into the middle of the board. You need a dedicated AMP board for it, but your mast and wings stay the ones you know, so nothing changes under the water.

Where the pack sits changes how the rig feels underfoot. Pod systems carry the weight under the board at the top of the mast, Duotone moves it onto your hips, and FLITELab hides it inside the board. The thrust numbers tell a similar story about priorities. In the table below they run from 25 kg for the FLITELab AMP to 35.5 kg for the Foil Drive MAX+, and that is enough, because the drive only has to push you up to takeoff speed, not carry you all session. Most brands publish no top speed at all; of the makers on this page only Stoke prints one.

Air travel shapes most of these battery designs. Duotone’s 159.6 Wh cells sit just under the 160 Wh limit for passenger flights, the travel batteries for the older Foil Drive MAX and for the Slim split into modules that each stay below it, and so do Flite’s 142 Wh AMPCells. Manta builds its Air battery from 97 Wh packs, under the 100 Wh line, while anything between 100 and 160 Wh needs the airline’s approval under IATA rules. Foil Drive’s newer MAX+ and Fusion have no travel battery yet. Spare packs never go in checked baggage, so the traveling foiler these designs are aimed at takes the batteries into the cabin.

The main systems in 2026

Every figure below comes from the makers’ own pages and stores, re-read on 5 October 2026. Where a brand publishes nothing, we leave the number out rather than guess.

Foil Drive Assist MAX+, Assist Slim and Fusion

Australian brand Foil Drive created this category, and the tagline is suitably confident: “the original foil assist”. Its all-rounder is the Assist MAX+, which replaced the 40-volt Assist MAX when Foil Drive discontinued that model in September 2026. The MAX+ runs at 43.2 V on the 648 Wh FM+ 650 battery, with 35.5 kg of thrust and 2,150 W of peak power on its spec sheet, and its minimum installed weight is 6.71 kg. Foil Drive’s FAQ says the MAX+ matches the Fusion for power and thrust, although the Fusion sheet prints 34 kg. A ride time is something Foil Drive does not print for the MAX+, and there is no travel battery for it yet. The whole unit is sealed to IP68. In the company’s European webshop, read on 5 October 2026, a complete MAX+ with the battery and a retrofit motor costs €4,892.14 to €5,536.14 with VAT included, and the packages that include an integrated mast run from €5,803.14 to €6,803.14.

The slimmer Assist Slimis aimed at riders who care about pumping and gliding: added weight from 3.75 kg, 26.5 kg of thrust and batteries of 166 to 241 Wh on the spec sheet, so the pack you pick sets both the weight and the price. Ride time is not published for the Slim either. As a complete kit with battery and a retrofit motor it is listed there at €3,895 to €4,570, depending on the battery and motor you choose, and those figures include VAT like every other Foil Drive price. Foil Drive publishes no top speed for any of its systems, which tells you a lot about the genre. What counts here is the takeoff, not the speedometer.

The third system is the Fusion, which opened Foil Drive’s newer Gen2.5 generation before the MAX+ joined it. It runs at 43.2 V on the 864 Wh Fusion 860 battery, which no other assist pack here beats (Manta’s TakeOff Flow matches it), or on the lighter 648 Wh FM+ 650, and pushes with 34 kg of thrust. The price of that is weight. The minimum installed weight is 7.9 kg with the 864 Wh battery, the heaviest in Foil Drive’s range. Unlike the MAX+ and the Slim, the Fusion comes with ride times from Foil Drive: up to 110 minutes in the surf or 61 minutes as an eFoil on the 864 Wh battery, and up to 70 or 48 minutes on the FM+ 650, as indicative averages for an 85 kg rider. A complete kit with battery and a retrofit motor costs €5,719 to €6,676 with VAT included, and the packages that include an integrated mast run from €6,804 to €8,043.

Duotone Foil Assist

Duotone belongs to the Boards & More group, and its 2026 answer is built around the integrated mast. The motor lives in a dedicated 84 cm eMast with the propeller 17 cm below the mount. The two batteries do not ride on the board at all: they sit in a waterproof eHarness box on a hip belt, and you control the drive with a waterproof smartwatch-style ring called the eRemote Watch Ring. The harness weighs approximately 3.76 kg with its box and batteries, and the specs table on the set and eMast pages gives the 84 cm eMast as 3.45 kg in aluminum (AL) and 3 kg in carbon (D/LAB), with a possible tolerance of 5% either way. Duotone quotes 25 to 40 minutes of ride time but publishes neither thrust nor top speed. It sells the sets in its own online shop as well as through its dealers, and on 5 October 2026 the Foil Assist Set AL 2026 cost €4,799 and the D/LAB set €5,999, VAT included, plus shipping. A third set, the Foil Cruise Set AL 2026 with an 80 cm mast, also cost €4,799.

Fliteboard FLITELab AMP

FLITELab, the sub-brand of Fliteboard, takes a completely different route. The AMP boards carry a water jet drive called the AMPJet in the middle of the board, and you attach your own mast and your own wings to it. Running two flight-friendly 142 Wh AMPCell batteries, the system delivers 25 kg of thrust. A set includes everything above the water, board and AMPJet included, and runs from $7,924 to $8,419 in the maker’s US shop, before shipping and tax. FLITELab’s FAQ says the jet adds 3.5 kg with one AMPCell and 4.5 kg with two, give or take, on top of the board, and that two cells are good for some 40 boosts, enough for a session of around two hours for most riders.

The rest of the field: Manta, Stoke and the Lift hybrid

The TakeOff Evo from Manta Foils runs on swappable batteries. An Air battery pairs two 97 Wh packs for 194 Wh, two Air batteries make 388 Wh, and the Endurance battery holds 518 Wh. With one Air battery the Evo weighs 4.5 kg (2.5 kg for the main unit and battery plus the 2 kg motor) and runs 15 to 20 minutes, and the largest combination, Air plus Endurance, holds 712 Wh and is claimed to give 65 to 70 minutes. The TakeOff Flow keeps a non-removable 864 Wh battery inside its main unit, which weighs 6.8 kg before the 2 kg motor, and Manta quotes 70 to 90 minutes for it. Manta sells through an EU shop with a configurator, where on 5 October 2026 the TakeOff Evo cost €5,380 with one Air battery and €6,688 with the 712 Wh combination, before the faster charger or the three-blade propeller, and the TakeOff Flow full kit €5,022, all with VAT included. The Foil Boost systems from Australian brand Stoke mount high on the mast, right under the board; for the Ultra version Stoke quotes 68 lbs of thrust (about 31 kg), a 35 km/h top speed (roughly 22 mph) and 30 to 60 minutes of running time at mixed throttle, 25 to 30 at full throttle.

The LIFTX from Lift belongs in a category of its own. It is not a retrofit kit but a hybrid eFoil: a complete board with a 0.9 kWh battery, weighing around 20 kg, that works as a surf foil with the motor switched off. At $13,999 it sits firmly in eFoil territory, yet it chases the same feeling as an assist system, a powered takeoff followed by free gliding.

The big systems side by side

If you want our read on it: anyone retrofitting a setup they already ride should start with Foil Drive, which has the most experience behind it, an established service path, the longest list of compatible masts and now three system sizes to choose from. Two cells in the ride time row say not published, both of them Foil Drive’s, and that is the maker’s choice, not an oversight in the table. The Duotone approach, with the battery on your hip, gives you the lightest board of the group. FLITELab makes sense for riders who were going to buy a new board anyway and want everything below the waterline to stay as it is.

Buying one, and what to check first

Foil assist systems are still a rare sight in local shops, so most of this buying happens online. Foil Drive sells direct: its European webshop prices in euros and ships within the EU, which keeps import duty out of the equation for buyers inside that market, and Manta also runs an EU shop in euros. Duotone sells the Foil Assist sets in its own online shop and through its dealers. Fliteboard sells through its own online stores, and Lift sells the LIFTX in its own online store and through the local partners in its dealer locator. Wherever you are, it pays to buy from a storefront that already serves your region: cross-border orders add customs handling, longer service loops and, for batteries, a shipping headache.

Two practical checks before you order. First, compatibility. With pod systems, the width and material of your mast are what matter; with integrated masts, the question is whether an adapter exists for your wings. Second, battery service. These systems stay useful for years precisely because the pack can be replaced, and it makes a real difference what a replacement costs and how it can be shipped to you, since lithium batteries travel as dangerous goods.

Worth knowing before your first session: a foil assist is a motorized craft, and rules for those differ by country and often by individual lake or stretch of coast. Check your local regulations before you ride.

Who is a foil assist really for?

The riders who get the most out of this gear are the ones already doing a foil sport. Surf and prone foilers use the motor as a stand-in for the push of a wave on days when no clean wave is running. Downwind paddlers hand over the hardest part of the ride, the takeoff. And wingfoilers get on the water when there is no wind to speak of. That last point matters more than it might sound: inland lakes and sheltered bays can sit glassy for days, well below what a wing needs, and a foil with an assist will lift off on water like that.

If this would be your very first contact with foiling, learn the basics first. A lesson on an eFoil, or a wing lesson, will make an assist system far more rewarding later. Flying above the water comes quickly. The motor-free gliding this discipline is built on is the part that takes practice.