Three decades ago,in 1977,the James Bond impressed the world by driving a car that could 'fly' under water in the film titled "The Spy Who Loved Me".This role was then played by Roger Moore.This act of James Bond in that movie was merely an animation effect,not the reality.At that time it was not possible to drive any car under water,as there was no real submarine car at that time.But now submarine car is a reality.
This scene of James Bond's movie greatly inspired Frank M Rinderknecht,the founder and CEO of Swiss auto-maker company Rinspeed, to turn this idea into reality.He turned his dream into reality by developing world's first submarine car sQuba.sQuba is actually the world's first car that can be driven both on the road and under water.This car can actually 'fly' under water .Snapshots of this car are shown below:
The chassis from Lotus Elise is used as the base for the design of this two-seater amphibious car.It was developed by replacing the Lotus Elise's petrol engine with three electric motors.One motor drives the back wheels for driving the car on the land,while the other two motors drive the specially designed propellers for driving this car under waster like a fish.It has two propellers in the stern and two jet drives in the bow.It is an electric car and power is supplied to it by rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries.Being an electric car,sQuba has zero emissions and it is very environmentally-friendly both for the sea and the land.It is 149 inch long,76 inch wide and 44 inch high.It has R-N-F transmission.
It has top speed of 75mph on land,4mph on water surface and 2mph under water.It can dive up to the depth of 3.28 feet (10 meters) under water and can stay under water for two hours.
For safety reasons this car has an open cockpit,as in case of emergency the occupants of this car may easily get out of the car.It is equipped with on-board self-contained oxygen system to supply both the driver and the passenger with fresh air for breathing.Both the occupants of the car can breathe through oxygen masks.
The vehicle features powerful and energy efficient LED lighting system.It is even capable of autonomous driving on the land due to sophisticated laser sensor system from Hamburg company Ibeo - without any help from driver or passenger.
All this technology of building the amphibious car has very steep price.It costs about $1.5 million to build such a car equipped with cutting-edge techonlogy.The sQuba car was unveiled at Geneva Motor show on 16 march 2008.Further details about this car may be found at the website of Rinspeed.
Related Posts :
All this technology of building the amphibious car has very steep price.It costs about $1.5 million to build such a car equipped with cutting-edge techonlogy.The sQuba car was unveiled at Geneva Motor show on 16 march 2008.Further details about this car may be found at the website of Rinspeed.
Related Posts :
No comments:
Post a Comment