Elon Musk's next awesome project: the submarine car

After buying James Bond prop, Musk is making it into a reality

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and the resident Iron Man of the so-called PayPal Mafia, seems like a throwback to another era. One where people really dreamed big and came up with ideas that could change the world and were also just really cool.

And now he's at it again, this time bringing one of the coolest James Bond fantasies to reality.

Ok, so do you remember the submarine car in the Spy Who Loved Me? No? Well, it is basically is what it sounds like: a car that can drive underwater. Which is, you know, amazing. 

Musk went ahead and bought the prop from the movie earlier this week for nearly $1 million. The only problem is, it is just a prop, which means it doesn't actually work.

While most people would just be mildly disappointed by that bit of news, it goes without saying that Elon Musk is not most people. Instead of just displaying this most awesome movie prop for all to see, he is going one step further: he is actually going to turn it into a working submarine car, it has been confirmed to VatorNews.

"It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater," Musk said in a statement provided by the PR team over at Tesla.

"I was disappointed to learn that it can't actually transform. What I'm going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real."

So, if you live in the Bay Area, and you happen to see someone driving on the bottom of the bay, don't worry. It's just Elon Musk.

There was no word on whether Musk has any plans to actually make more of these and sell them to the public.

Musk is, of course, no stranger to developing new forms and modes of transportation. He is the founder of SpaceX, after all, the space transport company that developed two of its own space launch vehicles.

And he is also the creator of the recently revealed Hyperloop, a new high-speed form of transportation that will, apparently, revolutionize the way we travel. If it ever actually gets built.

It works by having pods or capsules that produce air that create a cushion to reduce friction. The air cushions won’t actually move the pods. Instead, the pods will be accelerated by what basically amounts to a rolled-out electric motor. The whole system would be solar-powered using solar panels installed on the tubes, which would generate excess energy that could be stored so that the whole thing could run 24 hours a day.

Building something like this is going to be uber-complicated, of course, and Musk said that he simply doesn't have the time to do it himself. So its possible that hyperloop remains a fantasy, at least for the time being. 

Honestly, though, it doesn't really matter to me if the thing gets built or not, though I do hope to be able to one day test it out. What really matters is even having the idea. In an age where people are thinking small, and in the short-term, we need people like Musk to remind us that while practicality is obviously important, so is dreaming big and reaching for something that seems unattainable.

In my opinion, we could use a few more people like Musk out there right now.

The news of the submarine car was first reported by Japolnik on Thursday.

(Image source: https://www.caradvice.com)