A group of dutch students from the technical department at the University of Eindhoven has built a fully operative electric car, Luca, made entirely out of waste which includes plastics gathered from the sea, recycled polyethylene bottles and other household garbage.
‘Luca’ light & efficient
A two-seater sporty looking electric car which the students named ‘Luca’ can run at the maximum speed of 90 kilometers per hour and has a reach of 220 kilometers when the car is fully charged, announced by the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Luca is a compact car and is powered by two motors – one on each axle – and these combine for a humble power output of 12kW.
“This car is really special, because it’s made all out of waste”, project manager Lisa van Etten told international news agency.
“Our chassis is made out of flax and recycled PET bottles. For the interior, we also used unsorted household waste.”
For the external body, the hard plastic can be found from televisions bodies, toys and kitchen appliances which is used in the electric car body, whereas, for internal purposes such as seat cushions they are made of coconut and horse hairs.
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The electric car made through recycled material is built by a group of 22 students in approximately 18 months, revealed by Project Manager Van Etten. As per Etten, it is an effort to demonstrate the potential of waste.
Matthijs Van Wijk, the production team member said that “We really hope that car companies will start using waste materials”.
“It’s possible in many applications. More and more companies use waste or biobased materials in the interior, we want to show that it’s also possible to build a chassis out of it.”
