AN INNOVATIVE car design company has created the only real submarine car in the world. Car designer Frank M. Rinderknecht, aged 64, and his team at Swiss mobility lab Rinspeed are responsible for the “sQuba, the world’s first and only real submersible car capable of driving seamlessly from land to underwater.
source.image: Ridiculous Rides
The idea originated from the Lotus submarine car which James Bond drove in the iconic 1977 film “The Spy Who Loved Me”. But unlike Bond’s Lotus, the sQuba is a convertible, with oxygen masks for the car’s passengers and a quick drying interior for when you arrive back on land.
The sQuba is a zero-emission, all electric vehicle which uses three electric motors, one for land travel, two for water. It drives on land powered by its electric rear-wheel drive powertrain, using rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Upon entering water, it floats on the surface until the operator floods the interior to submerge it.
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It can be submerged to a depth of 10 metres, powered by twin electric-powered propellers supplemented by two Seabob water jets. It travels through the water like a submarine, rather than driving along the river- or sea-bed. The car’s top land speed is 120 km/h (75 mph). On the surface of water, the top speed is 6 km/h and underwater it is 3 km/h.
