Finding choice fuels and greener ways of getting from point A to point B now is back within the spotlight. Motive Industries of Calgary, Alberta, has announced plans to introduce Canada’s first bio-composite electric car, reports Fast Company. The bio-composite car can be known as the Kestrel, and also the green bio factor is hemp. Indeed, it’s a cannabis car that will no doubt be affixed with the moniker “pot car” by those who don’t understand horticulture. Resource for this article – Canada has high hopes for Kestrel cannabis car by Newystype.com.
Hempcar Program forecasted the Kestrel future
Understandably, the Kestrel has sparked up controversy. We are talking about pot, and Americans can’t resist the boogeyman. Canadian activist group Hempcar.org trumpeted a 2001 American road tour of 10,000 miles undertaken by a vehicle comparable to the Kestrel, but not constructed of weed fiber. The experimental auto they used ran on hemp biodiesel, which is not at the moment the case with the Kestrel, although it might eventually come to pass. The United States has yet for making cultivating industrial hemp lawful, though, so they won’t know what it’s like. Industrial hemp is no drug and doesn’t affect the mind, so there is no big deal, really.
Motive gets the hemp from Alberta Innovates
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. Hemp for body construction is lightweight, renewable and strong as glass composite, reports Fast Business.Motive isn’t really ready to start ripping Kestrels off the assembly line just yet, but testing a prototype should certainly begin before 2010 comes to a close.
In 1925, Henry Ford saw the future
According to Hempcar.org, Henry Ford told the New York Times that “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,” he said. “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 is a safe assumption because he made a car out of resin-stiff hemp fibers. It ran on hemp-based ethanol. Ford could have saved the country’s farmers from the grip of the Good Depression. Both Ford and farmers would likely have seen tremendous profits. However, Congress eventually passed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Thanks in large part to the influence of the DuPont company and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, cannabis was criminalized in America.
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
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