Electric Cars made from Vegetables and Waste Materials

foto: Bart van Overbeeke

This week I would like to follow in Christopher’s skorchmarks with an article about electric cars.

Students at Eindhoven University of Technology have unveiled a car built almost entirely from waste materials, including lots of plastic that was reclaimed from the sea. See it in the photo above.

They call the car LUCA, and she has some impressive stats:

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Name: LUCA

Top Speed: 90 km/h

Action Radius: 220 km

Weight: 360 kg without batteries

Battery weight: 60 kg

Consumption conversion: 180 km per litre.

It’s a two seater sports car.

The chassis is made from a mixture of flax and plastic recouped from the sea with the core constructed from recycled PET, the body is made of recycled ABS, a hard plastic used in many consumer products such as toys, televisions and kitchen products, and covered in a wrap rather than being painted.

The seats are made from recycled materials, as are the side and rear windows and the console.

The idea behind the car’s production is to demonstrate possible other uses for waste, but the team that produced LUCA have long been busy producing other interesting cars.

The University runs TU Ecomotive, 22 students from 7 different courses, whose aim is to make mobility greener in every way possible. LUCA is car number 6!

Each car boasts its own incredible stats and features, based upon its production goal.

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Name: ISA

Action Radius: 90 km

Battery weight: 12 kg

Consumption conversion: 400 km per litre

ISA is legal to drive ion the road and is therefore the most efficient car in Europe.

NOAH is a city car made predominantly from sugar and flax, is for the modern you, and is equipped with several smart features focused on the driver. Noah can be unlocked with any smart device with an NFC chip, immediately recognizes who you are and adjusts all the interior settings to your preference, loads your contact list and finds your destination from your phone to enable the GPS and get you to your appointment on time.

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Name: NOAH

Top speed: 110 km/h

Action Radius: 240 km

Weight: 360 kg

Consumption Conversion: 300 km per litre

Smesh Gearing and lots of interactive technology

Name: NOVA is a modular car whose body shape can be changed to suit its purpose.

Name: LINA is biobased, with the chassis and bodywork built from vegetable flax. She has 100 km range and is also certified for European roads.

All of the cars are electric, and you can download press packs and further details from the website here.

Could this be the future of mobility? A circular industry?

3 thoughts on “Electric Cars made from Vegetables and Waste Materials

  1. That’s great! I actually don’t even hear about these type of cars which made of such materials and that cars actually runs on a road that’s awesome especially cars made of waste plastic from sea and other waste materials that’s really creative work but I am not in favor of vegetables flax and sugar these edibles are not for these purpose especially in world where many people don’t fulfill their food requirements but overall their work is really worth for appreciation that for sharing such an interesting article

  2. Thanks Bilal, yes using edible foodstuff does raise some questions. It tends to drive up prices as much as anything else. This has been one of the problems with automotive fuels made from vegetables.

  3. Christopher Roberts

    These are simply fantastic!

    What a great project 🙂

    Years ago I went on a tour of the Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell and I remember them explaining that the dials and switches in their latest car were made from melted down chunks of metal from old Aston Martins. Wouldn’t it be great if this was done en masse in the automotive industry? So many components could get a second life.

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