Vessel electrification presents itself as a low-fuel consumption solution for inland waterways transportation. However, electric vessels must cope with challenges regarding the limited energy available in the batteries and how to use it properly to achieve the route to cover. As an energy management strategy, velocity control is proposed for a twelve-passenger electric vessel covering the Magangué-Pinillos-Conyongal route in Magdalena River, Colombia. Velocity control of vessels faces many challenges due to vessel hydrodynamics nonlinearities and uncertainties. The present work evaluates several nonlinear velocity control strategies, such as Gain-scheduling Model predictive control, Adaptive Model predictive control, and Sliding mode control. Dynamics uncertainties are not considered. From the results obtained, it can be established that the Sliding mode control (SMC) is the simplest to implement and has the best performance regarding energy consumption. Next, the Gain-scheduling control approach is smoother than the SMC but requires more computational effort and knowledge of the system. Finally, the Adaptive approach is better at reducing errors but has the highest computational effort.