Finding choice energizes and greener ways of getting from point A to point B now is back in the spotlight. Motive Industries, a Calgary, Alberta-based company, has a new bio-composite electric-powered vehicle in the works, as outlined by Fast Company. Dubbed the Kestrel, the bio-composite in question is hemp. Indeed, it’s a marijuana vehicle that will no doubt be affixed with the moniker “pot car” by those who do not understand horticulture.
Hempcar Podium forecasted the Kestrel future
Understandably, the Kestrel has sparked up controversy. We are talking about marijuana, and Americans can’t resist the boogeyman. But Hempcar.org’s 10,000-mile test run of a hemp biofueled automobile proved that it could work. The Kestrel – at least in early stages – could be made partly from hemp, but won’t run on hemp biofuel. The U.S. has yet to make cultivating industrial hemp legal, though, so they won’t know what it is like. There are no psychoactive elements to industrial hemp and it isn’t a drug, so the America’s stance is strange, thinking about the potential benefits.
With hemp from Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
So the supply chain for hemp runs from a farm in Vegreville, Alberta, to Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. They in turn supply the hemp for the Kestrel. The hemp makes for an extremely lightweight but solid automobile. Parts are very easily recyclable and also the construction is as strong as glass composite, writes Fast Company.When Kestrel nevertheless has a ways to go before full production, Motive expects they’ll be able to start testing by year’s end.
Back in 1925, Henry Ford knew it would work
”The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything,” said the prescient Henry Ford to the New York Times during the Great Depression. “There is fuel in each and every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented”.
Hemp was reportedly one of the plant materials on which Ford had his eye. This can be a safe assumption because he made a vehicle out of resin-stiff hemp fibers. It ran on hemp-based ethanol. If all had gone according to plan, Ford could have helped conserve America from the Great Depression via his ideas for “Farm Chemurgy”. There would are mutual benefit. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 threw a wrench within the works. .
Further reading
Fast Company
fastcompany.com/1684111/motive-industries-hemp-ev?partner=rss
Hempcar.org
hempcar.org/ford.shtml
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history_of_cannabis_in_the_United_States
