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."

Comments

Curran not made entirely from carrots (yet)

[levell]

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

Re:The goal?

[orclevegam]

Actually TFA points out that they opted for carrots due to the supply of non-food grade carrots available to them. What I'm waiting on thought is for our genetic engineering capability to achieve the state of not re-purposing existing biologic materials, but rather custom designing organisms to produce (or be) materials or products.

Correction

[julesh]

the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre of the University of Warwicks in the UK

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).

government subsidies

[falconwolf]

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