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For all the car lovers out
there: so far, you’ve been able to drive, eat and sleep in your car, but if you
want more diversity, well… how does swimming in your car sound? And no, we're not
talking about throwing your car off a bridge! We're talking about the underwater
car, called the “sQuba”, Rinspeed will officially present at the Geneva Motor
Show in March.
What is the first thing to go
through one’s mind when seeing an underwater car? James Bond of course and that
is exactly what inspired the Swiss auto-maker in creating the “sQuba”, the
world’s first submersible car. Rinspeed Inc. CEO Frank Rinderknecht said he has
been waiting for a care like this ever since he saw the Roger Moore movie 30
years ago.
It sounds out of this world to
be able to switch from driving a regular car to actually swimming, but that is
exactly what the Swiss maker intended: “We always want to do cars that are
outrageous, which nobody has done before… For three decades I have tried to
imagine how it might be possible to build a car that can fly under water. Now
we have made this dream come true,” Rinderknecht said.
There is one ‘small’ detail that
might catch your attention though: the car is convertible! Sounds strange, but
the automaker had a perfectly logical explanation for that: in case of
emergency, the occupants of the car would be able to get out as fast as
possible. Talk about the ideal car…
The “sQuba” can reach up to 77 mph,
but it has a very different behavior underwater, as you might imagine. The top
speed on the surface of the water is 3 mph, and falls down to 1.8 mph when
underwater. The car has zero emissions and the three electric motors are
powered by rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries.
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