Kestrel Is A Car Revolution Pot
Greener modes of transportation received a piece of good news lately. Calgary, Alberta’s Motive Industries is introducing an electric automobile with a bio-composite design that will surely take Canada by storm. Kestrel is the name, and hemp is the green construction material. You heard right; it is a green pot automobile.
Kestrel the coming of the Hempcar Podium
The Kestrel will no doubt spur clouds of controversy. Canadian activist group Hempcar.org trumpeted a 2001 American road tour of 10,000 miles undertaken by a automobile comparable to the Kestrel, but not constructed of weed fiber. The experimental automobile they used ran on hemp biodiesel, which is not presently the case with the Kestrel, although it might eventually come to pass. The 2001 option fuel vehicle used hemp biodiesel for fuel, and also 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. There are no psychoactive elements to industrial hemp and it’s not 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. Fast Company reports that the use of hemp in frame/body construction makes for a much lighter vehicle, plus it’s easy to recycle parts. Not only that, but the hemp compound is as strong as glass composite.Motive isn’t ready to start ripping Kestrels off the assembly line just yet, but testing a prototype should certainly begin before 2010 comes to a close.
Henry Ford knew about hemp fuel back in 1925
“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 can be fermented,” Ford continued.
Henry Ford most certainly was including hemp within the above discussion. To prove his theory, he made a car 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. Thanks in large part to the influence of the DuPont company and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, pot was criminalized in America.
Discover more info on this subject
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