Greenline Yachts and the Solar-Roofed Hybrid Cruiser

A design studio decides to build its own boat

Before there was a Greenline brand, Jernej and Japec Jakopin were known for J&J Design, the Slovenian studio behind hundreds of boats sold under other builders' names. In 2008 the brothers decided to put their own badge on a hull, building it at their Seaway yard. The goal was a cruiser slippery enough that a modest electric motor could push it, so Seaway borrowed a low-drag shape from its sailboat experience, covered the roof in solar panels and offered diesel, hybrid and, later, all-electric propulsion. The first diesel and hybrid drivetrains came from Volkswagen Marine.

The company has not had a smooth ride. A Slovenian court received an insolvency petition concerning Seaway in 2015, yet Greenline kept building, and today SVP Yachts owns the name, with the operation run from Begunje in Slovenia. For 2026 the lineup spans the Greenline 39, 40, 42, 45, 50 and 58, with coupe and flybridge versions of the bigger boats.

The 33 that made the name, the 40 that kept it

The Greenline 33 is the boat that put the brand on the map. Between 2008 and 2023 roughly 550 were delivered, each a compact single-cabin cruiser under a solar-panel roof, sold with one diesel of up to about 260 hp or with a hybrid setup in which the electric shaft motor also works as a generator. An all-electric version appeared near the end of the run. The hybrid badge sold the boat, yet a large share of buyers specified the diesel alone. Power and Motoryacht put the American base price of a 2013 hybrid at $320,000, and our model page follows its values year by year.

The Greenline 40, built since 2011, takes the same thinking to a two-cabin boat of 41 feet 8 inches riding on twin skegs. Buyers choose between twin 250 hp Yanmar diesels (older boats often carry Volvo Penta D3-220s), a hybrid with an electric motor on each shaft and a lithium bank as large as 53.2 kWh, or an all-electric layout with twin 50 kW motors backed by a small diesel range extender. YachtBuyer priced a diesel 40 at EUR 366,000 before VAT in 2023.

Buying a European hybrid from the US

Greenline has only a light footprint in America and the bulk of the used fleet is in European waters, so a US buyer needs to add shipping, import duties and commissioning to the budget. Expect about $125,000 to $290,000 for a used 33 and around $260,000 to $600,000 for a 40. Drivetrain and battery condition move the price more than model year does, and diesel-only boats are the simplest to keep running.

Before you buy, find a technician who knows the specific hybrid system, and check:

• Which drivetrain is actually fitted, and its service records
• Lithium battery capacity and battery management logs
• Clutch changeover between electric and diesel drive, tested each way during the sea trial
• Output from the solar array and health of the inverter
• Sliding roof or rear window seals, and the electric transom platform
• Bow and stern thrusters, and which are fitted