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Race Car Made With Veggies And Powered By Chocolate
IS4110 writes "A new racing car made with potatoes and carrots and powered with chocolate waste has been developed by the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre of the University of Warwicks in the UK.
The university's vehicle, called WorldFirst F3 project, has a steering wheel made of curran, a material derived from carrots, that is expected to replace glass fiber and carbon fiber. It also has a racing seat made of SoyFoam, a soybean oil-based, flexible foam material. Wing mirrors incorporate materials derived from potato starch, a bib made from flax fiber, and lubricants based on plant oils."
Race called on account of rabbit attack.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
At the moment the carrot-based material "curran" used to make the steering wheel contains some carbon fibre. Fly-fishing rods made out of the material are 50% carbon fibre at the moment.
The inventors are working to increase the percentage of carrot based material
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All that effort and those damn kids still wont like their veggies. Next year i wanna see an xbox360 made of Funions and then maybe we'll get a response.
Test me and I will chronicle your pain - The Archivist (Diablo 3)
Will a potato in the tailpipe still work, or will it operate as an afterburner? At least priming the tube with your mouth to syphon gas will be more pleasant now :D
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
And it may be something that we may see in other cars too, but using items from nature in our cars isn't really new.
Up until the late 60's most material in our cars like seats and carpets were of material from nature. Coconut fibers were common, but that was replaced by foam material.
Of course - it's the combination of material that's new and taken to a new level.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
To playing with your food...
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Spinach? Broccoli? Beets? You'd certainly need a lot of whatever to get that much iron...that doesn't sound very environmentally friendly.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
Potatoes are not vegetables
They just made a 200+ MPH Trabant!
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Ok the engine is not made by carrot or potatoes, or is it?
Given all the processing needed to manufacture the components from veggies, wouldn't it be easier to just make them from wood?
TFA: The project's goal is to prove that is possible to make a competitive racing car using environmentally sustainable and renewable materials.
Competitive against what? Wind powered sail cars? They still haven't solved the basic problem that racing huge machines is wasteful no matter what you use to do it with. There is an opportunity cost to all those potatoes going uneaten.
Nothing beats a potatoe.
... would you smell vegetable stir-fry? In that case they should use soy sauce as coolant and peanut oil as engine lube.
how many fossil fuels did they burn making all the materials?
What's the point of a project like this? I've seen plenty of stories in the form of "$TECHNOLOGICALLY_SOPHISTICATED_DEVICE made from $NATURAL_THING", and they're all useless gimmicks.
These guys used some natural materials to build a car. So fucking what? Either the natural materials require so much processing that they're practically "artificial" materials (like the Curran steering column), things we've known how to do for years (like building seats out of foam), or things that just destroy the utility of an object.
Furthermore, the production of these devices wouldn't be nearly as environmentally friendly if scaled up. How much fossil fuel would we expend growing the carrots for the steering columns, for example? I bet the carbon footprint wouldn't be much better than that of today's cars.
You want to help the environment? Work on real technology, not cheap dead-end gimmicks.
I've heard of some race cars having ceramic engines. Might be able to replace quite a few of the metal parts with ceramic materials? Although, I'm not sure that's really any better for the environment than metals.
To create these materials ... And how many heavy metal catalysts (that are supposed to be recycled, but in practice cannot all be recovered from the reactor).
And obviously how much oil-based fertilizer was used in growing the stuff in the first place.
I wonder if this "green" car is as green as Al Gore.
World food prices drastically increased as corn was diverted to ethanol alt-fuel projects. It also led to increased rates of deforestation.
If we are building every basic fabrication material from organic matter, doesn't that lead to an exponentially worse version of the same situation? I mean, how many viable sources of curran are there? And soy oil and potatoes? It sounds like a shopping list at your local organic grocer, which is great if you have a huge food surplus, but last I checked there were still 1 billion malnourished people in the world.
I'd be much more interested in seeing a post-consumer recycled car made of metal and plastic than a (largely) pre-consumer food based car.
Something like this.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
for the Nascar grapes
Be careful with this information because, if the FIA gets wind of it, there will be new sporting regulations in Formula One in 2010 on grounds of 'unsafe health advantages'.
Converting food into building material? Is this really a good idea?
Right now, corn is being converted into fuel, in a very inefficient manner, only affordable because of massive government subsidies (the pump prices held down by pulling money out of your wallet through taxes). Corn once was a cheap staple for poor people worldwide. Corn prices have gone up because of this ethanol, which means more starvation worldwide.
What will happen to other food prices if this keeps going on. How much will they subsidise the increased food prices, or are we going to have to start eating oil?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So, now we have the world's fastest carrot? Well I can't say that I hadn't always hoped for a borch soup on wheels...
The engine? And the fuel lines? And the tires? Come back to the real world where metal and plastics are still king.
Geez, how hard was that?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's the International Manufacturing Centre (not "Innovative", and doesn't have "Research" in its name), which is at the University of Warwick (not -s, which would be an abbreviation of Warwickshire).
'waste chocolate'? I'm afraid I don't understand :s
It also has a racing seat made of SoyFoam, a soybean oil-based, flexible foam material.
i've daydreamed about striking it rich with soybean based home insulation, mainly so i'd have an excuse to say "insoylation."
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
Right now, corn is being converted into fuel, in a very inefficient manner, only affordable because of massive government subsidies
Corn and other farmers have been getting government subsidies for more than 100 years though.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Come back to the real world where metal and plastics are still king.
Plastics were originally made from plants not petroleum. Remember Cellphane, that plastic food wrapping? It was made from plant cellulose.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I suppose that this is the world's first vegan, edible automobile? If you get hungry while traveling, just nibble on the accessories! :-)
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
My wife has told me there is no such thing as chocolate waste.
VROOOOM-NOM-NOM
When will people stop thinking it's cool to find new ways of wasting food? Whilst Carbon Fibre may be expensive, at least it's not using up food (that is sorely needed in many parts of the world) to be made.
~We demand rigidly defined areas of uncertainty~
What if someone is allergic to one of the many vegetables made, and does not know it, they should include epipin in there for the driver, who knows....who knows...
Is there a special low carb sauce that can go with that to make it more appealing?
will they have to carry a spare tyre?
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I would imagine their disclaimer would read something like this.
CAUTION
We assume no liability in any way whatsoever should your vehicle be eaten, attacked by farm animals, or rot out in the sun. Furthermore operation of this vehicle requires storage in a refrigerated garage for 22 hours per day when not in use.