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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
Lifestyle
London - Asharq Al-Awsat

Engineers Turn Tesla Car into James Bond Catamaran

Tesla CEO Elon Musk gestures as he visits the construction site of Tesla's Gigafactory in Gruenheide near Berlin, Germany, August 13, 2021. Patrick Pleul/Pool via Reuters/File Photo

Engineers have developed an incredible kit that can turn Tesla's Cybertruck into a James Bond-style water-going catamaran in a matter of minutes, according to The Daily Mail.

The 'Cybercat' accessory is the brainchild of US-based materials scientist Anthony Diamond and sees the battery-powered vehicle outrigged with a pair of lowerable pontoons and electric outboard motors.

These would give the bizarre-looking craft a top speed of around 25 miles per hour (40 kilometers per hour) on the water and a total range of up to 115 miles (185 kilometers) before it needs a refuel.

An advanced model dubbed the 'Cybercat Foiler' allows the Cybertruck to exceed 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers per hour) by rising its body out of the water for improved hydrodynamics. According to the developers, the Cybercat will likely retail for around $22,900–32,900 (£16,890–24,265) and the Foiler for $35,400–$42,900 (£26,109–31,641).

The fact that the Cybercat seems like something that might have been conjured up by Desmond Llewelyn's Q Branch is not entirely a coincidence. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the design of the Cybertruck itself was in part influenced by the 1976 Lotus Espirit S1 from 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.

In the film, the similarly polygonal car is driven by James Bond on a perilous chase across Sardinia, before evading its helicopter-bound pursuers by driving off a jetty and converting into a submarine.

Billionaire Musk even purchased 'Wet Nellie' — the custom submarine that represented the fictional car in the underwater sequences — for £550,000 in 2013, saying at the time that he intended to convert it into a functional car–submarine.

"We believe that with more than 1.3 million Cybertruck reservations, the market potential for Cybercat is immense," Cybercat creator Diamond said.

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