Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has reportedly bought the Lotus submarine car used in the 1970s James Bond film ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. Musk is apparently planning to install a Tesla electric engine in it and actually get the movie prop working as a real amphibious electric car.
The $866,000 (!) auction purchase was confirmed to USA Today by Musk, and he said that he’s going to upgrade the car with a Tesla electric powertrain and “try to make it transform for real”. He admitted to being amazing as a little kid growing up in South Africa watching the film, as the Lotus Esprit sped off a pier and transformed into a submarine at the touch of a button (see embedded video).
For the film, the car didn’t actually work properly, it was driven by a stunt man in scuba gear, but Musk obviously wants to change that. Does this mean we’ll also see Tesla submarine cars rolling off the assembly line at some stage in the future? That seems highly unlikely, but you never know with Elon Musk. After all, he’s already got his sights set on beginning to colonize Mars with the help of his other company SpaceX, and he’s recently put forward an initial design for a new, superfast mode of transport he calls Hyperloop.
Image: video snapshot
Via Jalopnik, USA Today
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