Every so often I see an example of the old phrase “that looks like a solution looking for a problem”, and this is a glorious one. I have never really personally wanted a hand held propeller driven swimming aide like these, so this product strikes me as especially useless. The Aqua Scooter is:

..the worlds only totally portable, submersible, gasoline powered personal water craft that can propel you quietly through the water at up to 5 mph!

Wow! It has enough gas to tow you “over 10miles” or 3 hours total running time in a single tank. They claim that it is a great way to get to dive sites, so I suppose they must have a customer base that would use their product. However, I give you this deep observation: it uses gas, which means it needs oxygen. See that pipe sticking up the top? Snorkel. They don’t really emphasize it on the site, but this thing has a serious weakness over battery powered alternatives- it can drown. Imagine if you will, that you are 5 miles from nowhere and a rogue wave, or even just a slight mistake, allows more water into the engine than it can handle [i.e. any amount], and it dies. Now you have to swim 5 miles, dragging a $900 drowned scooter. To be fair, they do say that the engine can be cleared of water:

What happens if I get water in the Engine? No problem, just follow instructions in you owners manual and you can be up and running in 2 to 3 minutes.

But I don’t think anyone that far from land would be happy about treading water while hoping that it comes back like the manual says it should. What about a small battery backup or something? Its already huge, adding a little more wouldn’t really make it any more or less appealing. Via The Red Ferret Journal.