It’s 2013, and I still don’t have an
invisible car. I also don’t have an ejection seat. Worst of all, my car can
neither fly nor go underwater. So I want to extend a bitterly disappointed thanks a bunch to the many movies and TV
shows that have raised my hopes beyond all measure only for them to be dashed
in a grey modern world where I still can’t even get my hands on a simple
Batmobile.
The invisible car
An
invisible car has a lot of applications. For example, um, well… ok it doesn’t
have that many applications but I WANT IT. In Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as
James Bond in Die Another Day his invisible car (which many people saw as the
Bond franchise jumping the shark but which I thought was basically amazing) was
explained with the notion that a car covered in microscopic cameras could project
an image of what sits behind the vehicle to onlookers, making it appear
invisible.
You might think that sounds ridiculous, but
the technology is actually starting to gain ground. Last year Mercedes revealed their new F-Cell car by successfully turning
it invisible using LED mats and a digital camera (in a clever metaphor for
the invisible effect the car will have on the environment…). So it can’t
exactly be driven in secret or used to fight crime, but it’s encouraging to
know that I’m not the only one who is still clinging on to this dream.
The ejection seat
Now, ejection seats are obviously a real
thing which aircraft have used for a long time so that crew can escape safely
during emergencies. So my complaint isn’t that ejector seats don’t exist; it’s
that I can’t have one in a standard car for my own leisure use – for example if
a passenger is backseat driving, or insisting on playing really terrible music,
or I simply think it would be hilarious to eject them as a fun surprise.
The TV show Mythbusters actually tried this
out, and they did manage to successfully modify a car to include an ejection
seat (it didn’t look massively safe, but still). So I guess I could add one to
my car, but I’m not sure even a comparison engine
could find an insurer to help me get the thing legally on the road.
The submarine car
Right, this one is actually a really good
idea. Imagine – you arrive at the seaside one beautiful Saturday morning but
alas, there’s nowhere to park! Just keep driving right into the sea. Drop the
anchor (I might be confusing submarines and pirate ships now…) and then swim to
shore looking suitably smug. And you can forget queuing to board the ferry to
France or even the Eurostar. Just submerge your car and drive there underwater.
Easy!
A guy called Frank Rinderknecht has
actually built this dream
car already. The only trouble is that it cost $1.5million to build and that
is actually a little out of my price range. It also only goes at 2mph underwater,
and I am really looking for something a little zippier. But it’s certainly a
start, so I won’t complain too much about this one.
The
future as I imagined it 20 years ago may not quite have arrived, but we are
slowly getting there. And if anyone has news on flying cars or commercially
viable Batmobiles please let me know.
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