Lat year, Aston Martin has introduced the RapidE, the iconic British car manufacturer’s first full electric concept car. The car offers unmatched performance, amazing acceleration, and torque, and it might just be the perfect fit for the new James Bond – at least that’s what the company’s CEO, Andy Palmer thinks. The CEO of Aston Martin, responsible for some of the finest James Bond Cars of all time, thinks that 007 switching to electric is “almost as inevitable as death and tax”. In an interview with CNBC, Martin praised the new Aston Martin as the next logical step:
“What does electric give you? It gives you phenomenal acceleration, phenomenal torque (force) – immediate pick-up, there’s no lag, so if you use it well and certainly in the near and medium-term and in our terminology, the long-term, you’re going to have at least a combination of battery, electric and gasoline and then you get the best of both worlds.”
I can’t help but imagine James Bond (Idris Elba?) sitting behind the wheel of his beautiful, electric Aston Martin, driving through a major European (or Middle Eastern?) state capital, wearing his iconic tuxedo. While sitting back, he brings up the city’s map by voice command (something Q had to invent back in the day but a standard feature in his new Aston Martin), makes a reservation at a high-profile nightclub, and even orders a medium dry Martini with lemon peel (shaken, not stirred) via its smartphone app. While the autonomous driving feature takes him there, he sits back, brings up his preferred Royal Vegas game – baccarat “Chemin de Fer” – on his car’s electronic dashboard, and plays a few hands for practice. While the Royal Vegas doesn’t have voice control in its games yet, that might be the next step in its evolution. The car’s dashboard would perfectly accommodate any Royal Vegas game, still leaving enough space for a news ticker and the speedometer.
Would an electric car be the right one for such an iconic movie series? Well, it would certainly be a completely different experience – most Bond fans would most likely miss the voice of a V12 during the movie’s traditional high-speed chases. Still, Bond has undergone so many changes over his long “career” – not only changes in the ranks of the actors playing the character but also in the filmmakers’ attitude toward the whole Bond universe – that an electric supercar would probably fit.
Ever since he took over the role, Daniel Craig’s heavy drinking, hard-fighting Bond has been quite a success at the box office. Only change is constant in Bond movies – so I think we’ll soon see 007 drive a full electric vehicle.
