James Bond’s next Aston Martin could be all-electric, says British tabloid

James Bond will be driving an electric Aston Martin Rapide E in the next installment of that film franchise, according to the UK’s Sun. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga will be spearheading the movie, tentatively titled Shatterhand and set to begin filming in April.

Quoting an anonymous “insider”, the UK’s Sun reported that Fukunaga, a “total tree-hugger,”—this is why British tabloids are the world standard—is working with Aston Martin to use the Rapide E in the film.

The Bond Rapide E will still have the gizmos and gadgets for which Bond cars are known, it’s just going to be a bit more environmentally friendly. That means the original Bond Aston Martin DB5‘s smokescreen generator and oil slick spreader will likely be deleted options.

The Sun’s source said, “It’s going to have all the high-tech gadgets. To be clear, this is something Cary pushed for and Daniel and the producers are going along with. Everybody is afraid of Bond getting labelled ‘too PC’ but they all felt the time was right to put him in a zero emission vehicle.”

The $331,000 Rapide E is Aston Martin’s first battery-powered production car and will be limited to just 155 units. Its twin electric motors have a combined 600+ horsepower and 700 lb-ft of torque, powered by a 65-kWh battery pack. Top speed is 155 mph and zero to 60 mph time is said to be under 4 seconds. That performance level will be available to Mr. Bond even when the batteries are not fully charged. Aston Martin says that the Rapid E can do a full lap of the Nurburgring at speed without any degrading of of the battery pack’s performance, so it should be up to the rigors of stop and go traffic.

Developed with Williams Advanced Engineering, technical partners on the Rapide E also include Hyperbat for the batteries, Integral Powertrain for the traction motors, and Xtrac for the transmission.

Since the Sun relied on an anonymous source, we reached out to Aston Martin for confirmation. Kevin Watters, director of communication for Aston Martin told us, “The Aston Martin and James Bond relationship is a very special one and represents a long-standing association since the first Aston Martin appearance in Goldfinger (1964) with the iconic DB5, however, we do not comment on speculation.”

Guess we’ll have to wait until the first teaser, like everyone else.