Electric car ‘Luca’ is made from recycled ocean plastic

October 20, 2020 by Alastair Sloane

Meet Luca, an electric car build almost entirely from recycled trash by students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

The project took around 18 months to complete, said group spokesman Matthijs Van Wijk. The chassis itself was made from ocean plastic.

“I’m so proud that we could make the chassis with ocean plastic. This is a really very difficult material to recycle, because there are so many different types of plastic in different conditions, but we still managed to implement it structurally,” said Van Wijk.

“It’s difficult to say exactly how much of the overall car is recycled, but we’ve estimated that it’s more than 95 per cent.”

Luca is powered by two electric motors – one on each axle – delivering a combined 12kW. The modest output is drawn from six batteries scavenged from wrecked cars.

But the car’s light weight, streamlined profile, and narrow tyres allow it to hit a top speed of 90km/h and have a range of 220km.

“I expect there to be more and more biodegradable and recycled materials especially for interiors in the future,” said Van Wijk. “It would be a dream for us to one day see a car like Luca driving on public roads.”

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