What is made of sugar and flax and can carry you to places at 80km per hour? The answer is a bio-degradable car. No!!, this isn’t some normal, school science project, this is a reality.
A group of students from the TU/Ecomotive team at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands have invented as bio-degradable car made from resin derived from sugar beets and covered with sheets of Dutch grown flax. This lightweight, electric vehicle is called Lina. The vehicle can carry four people and travel at a speed of 80 miles(50km) per hour.
Only the wheels and suspension systems are not yet of bio-based materials,” said Yanic van Riel, one of the developers from TU/Ecomotive team at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
The sheets of Dutch-grown flax that cover the car have a similar strength-to-weight ratio to fibreglass and weigh only 310kg.
There is a small glitch in Lina that maker the car not suitable for road. Noud van de Gevel, the team leader said that the material ‘will not bend like metal, but just break’ and hence, it has not passed any car crash tests.
The team is waiting for the Netherlands Vehicle Authority go give it the green light, later this year.
Invention of environment friendly cars is the need of the hour as regulators and consumers want to mitigate climate change and reduce air pollution levels. However, research says that the amount of energy that is spend during the manufacturing process of such cars is more than the energy spent while driving these cars.
Energy that is saved while driving the car is now spent during the production phase,” Mr van de Gevel said.
