Rinspeed reveal sQuba, the car that can go underwater

If you’re going to the Geneva Motor Show make sure you check out the latest concept car from Rinspeed.

Rinspeed boss, Frank Rinderknecht, is known for his extraordinary automotive creations. The acknowledged James Bond enthusiast and Swiss automobile visionary kept revisiting the scene from 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me in his mind over and over. It was in this particular Bond flick where our favourite secret agent dove into the sea in his car/submarine.

“For three decades I have tried to imagine how it might be possible to build a car that can fly under water. Now we have made this dream come true.”

While there have been military vehicles that can function underwater they don’t really ‘go’. They’re limited to creeping along slowly over the submerged ground. It’s the submerged stabile flight at a depth of 10 meters that sets the sQuba apart from military vehicles.

Rinderkknecht’s goal was to make a vehicle that travelled at a respectable speed underwater.

“It is undoubtedly not an easy task to make a car watertight and pressure resistant enough to be maneuverable under water. The real challenge however was to create a submersible car that moves like a fish in water.”

First, the combustion engine was removed and replaced by several electric motors. Three motors are located in the rear. One provides propulsion on land, the other two drive the screws for underwater motoring. They are supported by two Seabob jet drives in the front, which ‘breathe’ through rotating louvers from HS Genion (for opening and closing the water intake). The rotating outlet jets were designed to be extremely light yet twist resistant by using high-tech nano materials.

You drive the car into the water and the car floats. That is, until you crack the door to let the water in. Immediately the sQuba begins to sink. The occupants’ breathing air comes from an integrated tank of compressed air similar to what divers use when scubadiving.

Rinderknecht said that for safety reasons the car couldn’t have an enclosed cabin.

“we have built the vehicle as an open car so that the occupants can get out quickly in an emergency. With an enclosed cabin opening the door might be impossible.”

However, safety wasn’t the only reason for choosing an open-top design : With an enclosed volume of just two cubic meters of air the vehicle weight would have increase by two tons to counteract the unwanted buoyancy, giving the sQuba the land mobility of a snail.

Without occupants the sQuba surfaces automatically. It is even capable of a bit of the old auto-pilot when driving on land.

For all the environmentalists out there thinking, “Great, so now we have something that emits the equivalent of a car and a boat” you don’t have to panic.

The sQuba is a zero-emission car. It produces no exhaust emissions. The Swiss are among the world’s pioneers in hydropower so the sQuba’s filling station is the water reservoir.

The sQuba will be on show at the Geneva Motor Show, which is running from the 6th to the 16th of March.

Read more on Rinspeed