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Rinspeed

Mexican drug cartel's Bond mobile

It looks like the bad guys are taking a leaf out of the Q Branch car-modification manual. According to the BBC, Mexican police have discovered a gadget-laden Jeep Grand Cherokee equipped with an onboard smoke machine and a device to scatter spikes in the road behind it in order to evade capture. The vehicle, which is believed to belong to members of a drug cartel, was abandoned in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas after a shoot-out. The SUV may not be on a par with the torpedo-launching, oil-spraying, mine-ejecting Lotus Esprit that Commander Bond used to his advantage in &… Read more

Rinspeed to debut submersible sQuba in Geneva

Rinspeed, a boutique automotive design company, plans on blowing away the upcoming Geneva auto show with its sQuba concept, a car that swims underwater, drives autonomously on land, and is emission-free. The car, based on a Lotus Elise, uses an electric motor to drive the wheels on land, plus two other motors to drive propellers underwater. According to Rinspeed, it uses a laser system to detect obstacles ahead so that it can drive itself. Rinspeed released video of the sQuba, showing that it really can swim underwater.

Sound familiar? James Bond's Lotus swam underwater in the 1977 movie, The … Read more

Airplane mood cabins

Swiss automotive design house Rinspeed announced a new initiative to design airplane cabins with light displays on the walls. According to its press release, Rinspeed says it can replace "clinical and plastic-orientated ceiling and side panels" with "soft-focus effect pictures and patterns, which are supported by sound and aromas". Rinspeed calls its cabin design Sensosphere. It relies on a computer-controlled electroluminescent material lining the cabin walls for the displays, and we're not really sure what it relies on for the aromas. But anything has got to smell better than the passenger in the next seat. … Read more