Elon Musk Making a Working Version of James Bond's Submersible Car 91
Nerval's Lobster writes "In The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), James Bond is given a Lotus Espirit S1 that doubles as a submarine. More than thirty years after that movie's release, a contractor opened up a random Long Island storage container to find one of the automobile-submarines used in filming. He promptly put it up for auction, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk purchased it for a cool $866,000. But Musk isn't planning to restore the Bond car and put it in a garage somewhere: he wants to make it run. 'It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater,' Tesla PR wrote in a statement to Jalopnik. 'I was disappointed to learn that it can't actually transform. What I'm going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real.' Whether that means Musk will install new equipment in the actual prop, or have his engineers build a seaworthy replica, is an open question. What's more certain is that Musk has the capability (and cash) to make something like that happen, considering how he already manages the construction of next-generation electric cars and reusable rockets for a living."
Looking forward to the Tesla USB (Score:2, Interesting)
Being from the Bay Area, it would be really cool to drive from, say Palo Alto to Emeryville (Steve Jobs' old commute) on or under the bay. Would probably be quicker than going through traffic.
Submersible, but not dry (Score:4, Interesting)
That movie had a roadable version of the car and a submersible version, but not one that could do both. The submersible version wasn't dry; the operator was wearing scuba gear.
I'm starting to worry that Elon Musk is getting spread too thin. Space-X, Tesla, Hyperloop, automatic driving, plus this. We really need for Space-X and Tesla to succeed.