Frank: The Squba is the only real diving car in the world. We are building exciting concept cars, to illustrate the future of mobility. Frank founded his company Rinspeed 42 years ago, and has dedicated his professional life to creating extraordinary concept cars.
But there's one that stands out from the crowd. Frank: We built the Squba, some 12 years ago, but still today, it's our icon. It's the most sought after vehicle for film, for photos.
And that's probably the biggest milestone in our history. The Rinspeed Squba is the world’s only diving car. Capable of seamlessly driving from land to underwater.
Frank: The Squba is the only real diving car in the world. The Squba might be the only one in the world, but the idea was first seen back on screen in 1977. Frank: The idea certainly came from this vehicle.
We all know it from James Bond. It was fiction, it was Hollywood, it never really happened. So our claim was to put all that fiction into reality, to build up the only real diving car in the world, which it’s still today.
And we made it happen. Building such a unique vehicle required careful planning and engineering. Frank: We built up our Squba based on the Lotus Elise.
We did not redesign the Elise but, the inside all its technology has completely changed. Took out the internal combustion engine and replaced it with an electric one. In the ocean James Bond’s movie the car was closed, yet physically this is extremely difficult to do it in real life.
Because it would mean to add a lot more weight to the vehicle, it would mean to add un-safety. So we decided to dive in the open and that means that we have to have materials, which dry off very quickly. The favorite feature of the Squba certainly is the diving.
It's the experience of floating on the water going within the vehicle. And once you've done that, it's really out of this world. And you cannot compare it to normal diving at all.
As we dive in the open with the Squba, we of course need not only material which dries off, but we also need connections to the compressed air for people to breathe. With my left hand I control the props in the back, with my right hand the power of the jets within the hood of the vehicle to propel the water out in the back. And I also steer with that.
And then the instrument to tell me all the status of the battery is the depth, the speed and so forth. Here in the back, we see the two propellers and like a ship we can control going left or going right. Like James Bond has his fish, which he handed out after he resurfaced, we have our lobster which we caught while diving.
When we showed off the first time the Squba I mean we were flooded by journalists. Despite releasing this vehicle years ago, the car remains a one of a kind. Frank: We had a dozen of serious people interested in the vehicle, yet we declined the request.
Because to build a car which can drive on the road, which is able to go into water and to be exposed with corrosion is extremely complex. So we felt it's better not to duplicate just keep it as a one off vehicle. would have been too much risk.
Probably to scale the production and have those cars out underwater someplace. The automotive industry is watching us very closely on what we do. They get many times inspired by our innovations and inventions.
