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| © Car and Driver The car company that has yet to turn a consistent profit now turns to the lucrative world of personal-submarine mobility. |
By Alexander Stoklosa, Car and Driver
- At the Tesla annual shareholder meeting, CEO Elon Musk made a casual reference to a submarine design that he says the automaker has on hand.
- Nothing else is known about the would-be personal submarine, other than that Musk says a design for it exists.
- The revelation was spurred by a shareholder's inquiry into whether or not Tesla has plans for such a vehicle.
Tesla founder Elon Musk often fires off surprising and controversial remarks that leave followers of the electric automaker scratching their heads. At this week's shareholder meeting, for example, Musk revealed that Tesla has a design for a personal submarine. Seriously.
Stranger still, this zany idea wasn't offered up by Musk out of
the blue. For some reason, a shareholder at the meeting asked
specifically whether Tesla is working on a car capable of land and sea
travel. Who are these people, and what's next: a passenger seat capable
of holding dinosaur friends? An ice-cream dispenser in the trunk?
The
entire topic is surprising given that Tesla the carmaker-as opposed to
Tesla the nascent submarine provider-only recently turned its first
quarterly profit. It has suffered several unforced errors in recent
years, from the overcooked and problematic gullwing doors on the Model X to the promised affordable Model 3 that, well, never actually ended up being quite as cheap as advertised.
So, as cool as a submarine sounds, we feel as if Tesla should focus on
its core business, that of building automobiles, before turning its
attention under the sea. Luckily for Tesla, Musk agrees, since he
dismissed the submarine talk at the shareholder meeting as a
distraction.
