Yahoo Autos License to Charge! James Bond to Drive Electric Aston Martin in Next Movie
Daniel Craig could drive the all-electric Rapide E in the upcoming 25th James Bond movie, according to British tabloid The Sun.
The Rapide E is due to enter production later this year, with 600-plus horsepower from two electric motors.
The next installment in the franchise will be released on April 8, 2020, and will be Daniel Craig's last appearance as James Bond.
According to a story in British tabloid The Sun-which should be taken with a large grain of salt-James Bond will be ditching gas-guzzling V-8s and V-12s in favor of an ec0-friendly electric car for the next installment of the franchise. The new movie, set to be released next year, will be the 25th Bond film and the final movie to feature Daniel Craig as 007. Of course, because it's James Bond, his new EV will still be an Aston Martin. An unnamed source told The Sun that the film's director is "a total tree-hugger" who has been working with Aston to get one of its upcoming electric cars ready for the movie. The source said the EV is "going to be the center of an incredible action sequence" and went on to add that the movie will still have "all the high-tech gadgets" that we expect from a Bond vehicle.
The most likely candidate is the Rapide E sedan, which is set to enter production by the end of 2019. Based on the standard gas-powered Rapide, the Rapide E will have a 65.0-kWh battery pack, two electric motors that produce more than 600 horsepower and 700 lb-ft of torque, and a range of more than 200 miles. When we drove an early prototype of the Rapide E in 2017, we found that it had "a sense of huge potential" despite being very unfinished. We think the electric Rapide would be a great fit for Craig's Bond, an excellent mix of style and technology.
The Sun's source said that the movie's producers feel "the time is right to put him in a zero-emission vehicle," and we have to agree. There's also the possibility that the movie car could be the upcoming DBX crossover, which is due to be revealed later this year. While it will debut with a V-8 engine, an all-electric version of the SUV is expected down the line, and it could appear in the movie in prototype form.
Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond has seen him drive some other excellent Astons. In his first movie, 2006's Casino Royale, he drove a prototype of the DBS coupe, which went into production a year later. The DBS was seen again in Quantum of Solace where it got destroyed, and in Skyfall, Bond drove his classic DB5. Spectre, which came out in 2015, was the last Bond film to be released, and it featured a one-off Aston called the DB10. (Well, they made more than one for filming purposes, but we digress.) That car evolved into the new Vantage production car, so there's also a chance that Bond's new EV could be a concept that previews a car we don't yet know about.
Bond 25 has been going through production hell for the past few years. The originally announced release date of November 8, 2019, has been pushed back multiple times to where it now sits at April 8, 2020. The script has gone through multiple revisions, delaying the start date of production and filming, and the movie is now on its second director, too. Danny Boyle was originally announced to direct in March 2018 but quit a few months later; Cary Joji Fukunaga replaced him in September 2018. Fukunaga directed the first season of HBO's True Detective as well as Netflix's series Maniac and the movie Beasts of No Nation. Filming reportedly will finally start next month, but an official title has yet to be announced, with the movie using the working title Shatterhand.
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