Tesla announced last year that it would build a metal charging snake for its luxury electric vehicles.

Now Elon Musk 's company has released a video showing the snake actually working – and it looks terrifying.

Bearing a strong resemblance to the alien water tentacle from The Abyss, the metallic snake automatically attaches itself to a waiting Tesla Model S.

The video was posted on Tesla's official Twitter account and shows the prototype snake probing its way into the car's charging port.

And even Musk admits the "Snakebot" looks a little "wrong".

The idea is for the sci-fi snake to administer a top-up similar to the one you would get at a petrol station.

The current drawback is that it takes about 20 minutes to get a decent charge into a Tesla, as opposed to a couple of minutes to fill up a tank with petrol.

If Musk's probing space snake became commonplace, you could leave the car to get filled up automatically.

bbabo.Net