Tesla has a design for an electric submarine car, but don’t hold your breath

Elon Musk revealed that Tesla has a design for an electric submarine or amphibious car, but it doesn’t sound like it’s something that they plan on bringing to market.

The 1977 James Bond movie ‘The Spy Who Loved Me‘ featured a modified Lotus Esprit that could change into a submarine.

It was lost for years, but the car was eventually found in a storage locker bought blindly for just $100 and back in 2012, Elon Musk secretly bought it for ~$900,000 in a bidding war against another car collector.

While the Lotus Esprit was modified for the movie, it’s not actually able to operate as a submarine as shown in the movie (clip below) as it is very much just a movie prop.

Musk previously talked about Tesla working on making the vehicle practical and drivable on the road while also capable of turning into a submarine like in the movie:

While they never ended up doing it, Tesla did use Musk’s ‘The Spy Who Loved Me‘ car as an Easter Egg inside its own vehicle software.

Now Musk says that Tesla actually has its own submarine car design.

The CEO made the comment during Tesla’s 2019 shareholder’s meeting today when asked about Tesla making an “aquatic car”:

“It’s funny you should mention that… we do actually have a design for a submarine car, like the one from ‘The Spy Who Loved Me‘ – the Lotus that sort of turns into a sub.”

Musk confirmed that he still has the car from the movie and he added that it’s one of “the coolest things” he has ever seen.

Without going into too many details, he did say that it’s possible to make a working version by making it “a little bit bigger.”

However, the CEO jokingly admitted that the market for it would be small, but he added that Tesla might still build its design as a show car at some point.

While it’s common in the auto industry to build show vehicles that never go into production, Tesla has not been participating in this trend. They have historically been aiming to bring to production all the vehicles that they have unveiled to date.

Is this going to change for a Tesla submarine car? Let us know in the comment section below.