Plan to turn Bond Lotus into real submarine

October 21, 2013 by Alastair Sloane

Elon Musk, the CEO of electric car company Tesla, wants to turn the film prop Lotus Esprit he bought at auction in London last month into a car that really can drive under water.

Tesla Motors Inc CEO Musk talks about Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne — Elon Musk

South African Musk paid US$989,000 for the Lotus used as a submarine of sorts in the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me.

The car was just a prop that could only be driven underwater by a diver in scuba gear, but Musk said he wants to truly make it work.

“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,” Musk told USA Today.

“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.”

The vehicle would be capable of functioning like a real car on land, and once in water, would convert into a working submarine.

In the movie, the Esprit is driven into the water by 007 secret agent Roger Moore.

Once under the waves, it sinks before the wheels retract and fins and a propeller emerge.

Six Esprits were used for the film but the auction car was the only one kept. It was built by US company Perry Oceanographic and driven by a retired US Navy Seal. The build cost was said to be US$100,000.

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Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

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The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.