The search for alternative energizes and modes of transportation that are environmentally friendly has taken a new, green turn. Motive Industries of Calgary, Alberta, has announced plans to introduce Canada’s first bio-composite electric auto, reports Fast Business. The Kestrel will hit the avenues with its very green hemp construction. You heard right; it’s a green weed auto.
The actual Hempcar Manifesto fuels coming of Kestrel
As with other things involving hemp and weed, the Kestrel marijuana vehicle has stirred attention. Back in 2001, Hemp-car.org tested a auto that ran on hemp biodiesel, which the Kestrel currently doesn’t do but might within the near future. The Kestrel – at least in early stages – could be made partly from hemp, but won’t run on hemp biofuel. The 2001 alternative fuel vehicle used hemp biodiesel for fuel, and the group stressed at the time that if hemp could legally be cultivated in the United States, greater fuel economy and lesser environmental impact would be within reach. Industrial hemp is no drug and doesn’t affect the mind, so there’s no large deal, really.
Alberta Innovates Technology Futures provides the hemp
Alberta Innovates Technology Futures provides the hemp for the Kestrel and purchases its cannabis stock from an industrial hemp farm located in Vegreville, Alberta. The hemp makes for an very lightweight but solid vehicle. Parts are very easily recyclable and also the construction is as strong as glass composite, writes Fast Company.It is unclear at this stage when Kestrel will enter the production phase, but Motive has plans to test the automobile at good length later in 2010.
In 1925, Henry Ford saw the future
”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 Henry Ford to the New York Times nearly 90 years ago, or so Hempcar.org says. “There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that could be fermented”.
Hemp was reportedly one of the plant materials on which Ford had his eye. To prove his theory, he made a vehicle out of hardened hemp fibers and fueled it with ethanol made from hemp biodiesel fuel. Ford could have saved the country’s farmers from the grip from the Good Depression. It would benefit Ford tremendously and revive American agriculture. But then came the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. There’d been a series of battles leading to that point in Congressional history. Once the DuPont company and newspaper uber-baron William Randolph Hearst had their say, hemp was buried beneath pages of unnecessary laws. Ford’s path of innovation was closed.
Additional 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
