LOL: Rinspeed sQuba

[Grendal]

This car is built on an Lotus Elise frame and uses a 54 kWh battery pack. Hmm. Kinda sounds familiar... Rinspeed should be able to do inexpensive Roadster conversions.

[mattjs33]

I've seen this before, and I still think it's awesome.

(Mods bear with me here, it seems off topic at first but if you grant me some leeway I assure you it's relevant...)

This gives me an idea -- Anyone remember the Gibbs Aquada? It's a modern equivalent of the Amphicar 770, an amphibious automobile. Quite clever in fact. They were going to try to sell them in the U.S. (a natural, given our huge private boating market), but it was going to require dual certification (much like the upcoming Terrafugia Transition). Apparently the big stumbling block is that relevant U.S. marine standards don't allow anything onboard to be anywhere near the heat of a catalytic converter, which is of course necessary for road compliance. So U.S. imports never happened. I think they sell them in Europe though?

In any case, the electric propulsion system of the sQuba would seem to me to be an ideal way around this issue! Of course I'm sure there would be other hurdles, but it would certainly make such a vehicle a lot more likely. Could we see electric Gibbs Aquadas in the U.S.? How about sQubas? What fun.