Speaker 1: What looks like a James Bond getaway vehicle and can fly underwater Feast your eyes on the jet shark. It's still in the prototype phase for now, but we spoke to its founder and creator to learn more about how it works, how much it'll cost, and when and where you might get a chance to try one.
Speaker 2: It actually uses wings and forward propulsion to fly underwater
Speaker 1: If the jet shark's underwater cruising capabilities look familiar. You might have seen [00:00:30] its creator's previous work with Innerspace Sea Breacher, a company he co-founded back in 1997.
Speaker 2: You know, they look like dolphins, sharks, kilo whale sailfish. Basically, we'll build whatever a customer wants. We've delivered about 170 of those throughout the world. They're all custom built to order.
Speaker 1: Rob took the lessons he'd learned and customer feedback he'd received with the sea breacher and applied it to the development of his next project. The Jet Shark,
Speaker 2: Right now it's a four seater boat. Later models go out [00:01:00] to about six seater. Basically you can launch and retrieve it just like any regular boat.
Speaker 1: One of the more user-friendly changes from the sea breacher involves the vehicle's controls.
Speaker 2: The sea breachers are super fun to drive, but it's quite a difficult boat to drive. It's a very visceral experience. You know, you are basically controlling a lot of different mechanisms cuz it pitches, rolls in yours more like an aircraft than a boat because the jet shark's a lot bigger, it's a lot harder to manipulate those controls, especially in [00:01:30] water. You'll sort of have a, a joystick kind of like in a, in a computer game simulator and that will then go through a computer processor and then power the control systems.
Speaker 1: There's two sets of controls up front so that as new pilots learn the ropes, they can control different parts of the watercraft. The vessel is also much larger than its predecessor.
Speaker 2: It's about three times the volume of the, of the sea breacher. So getting that big point vessel underwater required a lot more complex [00:02:00] systems to, to get it sorted out. So yeah, there's no parts in common between my original sea breacher and the new jet shark. If the sea breacher was a race car, then the jet shark's sort of like a GT card.
Speaker 1: The prototype has a top speed of 45 miles per hour, but Rob tells me that the production models will reach speeds of up to 50 or 60 miles per hour depending on the engine to keep passengers safe. It also has sensors like radar and lidar to keep tabs on any obstacles that may be nearby.
Speaker 2: [00:02:30] Price-wise, we're trying to keep the price to about $200,000 as the starting point. Once you start getting into the carbon fiber, the Hal and the supercharged engine and some of the, the bells and whistles and probably get closer to 300,000.
Speaker 1: The market Rob's envisioning for the Judd shark mainly involves recreational used in tourist destinations.
Speaker 2: Crystal clear water. You'll have a, a pilot that will take passengers for, for rides on the surface and then dip underwater jump breach, sort of like an underwater ride.
Speaker 1: [00:03:00] There's still some regulatory hurdles and fundraising that needs to happen to get the jet shark to the commercial phase.
Speaker 2: It is registered as an inboard power boat. The jet shark, you can basically own just like a regular boat. You don't need any special licensing for it. So we'd like to see the commercial operations start doing favor testing end of this year, early next year. And then we would like to start delivering, you know, the first batch of boats, end of 2024.
Speaker 1: As always, thanks so much for watching. I'm your host, Jesse Orle. [00:03:30] See you next time with the fan.
