Check Out the Boat With Retractable Treads That Can Crawl on Land!

This post originally appeared on Gizmodo by Andrew Liszewski. 

Forget about finding a boat launch to easily slip the Iguana 29' into the water. Tucked away against its hull are a set of retractable caterpillar treads that let it drive in and out under its own power.

It was designed and developed by Antoine Fritsch and Tanguy le Bih as a way to make boating more accessible in areas where the coming and going of the tides are very extreme. With a top land speed of just five miles per hour it will still need to be transported using a boat trailer, but it removes the need of having to find a safe place to back the boat up into the water so it can be launched.

Check it out:

The long set of caterpillar treads actually exert less pressure on the ground than a human, so the boat doesn't tear up the terrain as it lumbers towards the water where it can then reach speeds of up to 40 mph once they're retracted. It can comfortably seat and carry up to ten passengers, making it particularly ideal as a way to ferry people between water locked locations, and a planned hybrid version will even be able to run under electric power where the gas engine is considered too loud.

While it looks like the perfect ride for beach landings and assaults, it's lacking any kind of sleeping area making it difficult to use for overnight excursions, and even more difficult to justify its expected $287,000 price tag. For that kind of money you could just strap a Boston Whaler to an old bulldozer with change leftover.