Thirty years after the movie thriller ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ hit the silver screen, ‘sQuba’ is the first car that can actually ‘fly’ under water.
The acknowledged James Bond enthusiast and Swiss automobile visionary, Frank M. Rinderknecht, kept revisiting this scene in his mind over and over, “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.”
And it is this submerged stabile flight at a depth of 10 meters that sets sQuba apart from military vehicles. While the latter can go under water, they are limited to driving slowly over the submerged ground. Rinderknecht says, “It is undoubtedly not an easy task to make a car watertight and pressure resistant enough to be manoeuvrable under water. The real challenge, however, was to create a submersible car that moves like a fish in water.”
It also had to be a sports car that was converted into a diving dream in the facilities of Swiss engineering specialist Esoro. In a first step 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 powerful Seabob jet drives in the front, which ‘breathe’ through special 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, so-called Carbon Nano Tubes.
You drive the car into the water and the car floats. That is, until you crack the door to let the water in. Immediately sQuba starts on his way to the underwater world. The occupants’ breathing air comes from an integrated tank of compressed air that divers know from scuba diving. Rinderknecht explains, “For safety reasons 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.”
But 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 to increase by two tons to counteract the unwanted buoyancy, giving sQuba the land mobility of a turtle. Without occupants, sQuba surfaces automatically. It is even capable of autonomous driving on land thanks to a sophisticated laser sensor system from the Hamburg based Ibeo - without any help from the driver or passenger.
Power is supplied by rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries. Rinderknecht confirms, “sQuba is a zero-emission car as documented by the rotating license plate in the rear. It produces no exhaust emissions. The Swiss are among the world’s pioneers in the area of hydropower. sQuba’s filling station is the water reservoir.” The vehicle also features powerful and energy-saving LED lighting technology.
The Motorex lubricants used in sQuba are biodegradable. For the Rinspeed boss that is a meticulousness stemming from conviction, “sQuba lets me be one with the elements and lets me immerse myself in a new and fascinating world - with Q factor. It is our duty to protect this world in which we are guests to the best of our ability.”
