Making a truly sustainable vehicle sounds like a nearly impossible endeavor, but a team of Dutch students recently gave it a shot, with the result being a rather impressive sporty-looking electric car made almost entirely out of waste.
Developed by a team of students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, the adorable car is largely made of recycled waste, including plastic fished out of the ocean, PET bottles, and even household trash.
“With this car, we want to show that waste is a valuable material, even in complex applications like a car,” team member Matthijs van Wijk said in a statement.
The small two-seater car, called Luca, features an electric powertrain, with two electric motors allowing it to reach a top speed of 90 km (56 mph). And because it’s extremely lightweight, it has an impressive range of about 136 miles.
Luca’s chassis is mostly made up of flax fibers mixed with plastic collected from the ocean. This unusual mix of various plastics together with the natural material can make the chassis a surprising amount of rigidity, according to the researchers.
The car’s body is made of recycled ABS, a hard plastic typically found in toys, televisions, and kitchen products. As for the yellow finish, the car gets it from a yellow-colored film, rather than paint, which can be easily removed and recycled at the end of its life.
The interior also features a fair amount of recycled waste. The cushions of the two chairs are made with coconut hair and horsehair, while the fabric around them is made of recycled PET, which feels and looks like suede.
