Car that runs on coffee? Check. Coffee car that beats landspeed records? Not so check, until now. With this update to the original “Carpuccino”, the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers have built a car that can hit 107km/h running just on coffee beans, making it the fast gasification-powered car ever.
While the first coffee car was built out of a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, the Mark II is an even rarer British Leyland Rover SD1. Still retains that old-school DeLorean aesthetic, though. All the steel and valves the group outfitted the car with work together to turn coffee beans in biofuel. It’s a process called gasification, and it involves combining the coffee grounds with oxygen, and heating them up to 700C.
So all the coffee car had to do was beat the original record of 76km/h, held by an American wood pellet-powered “Beaver Car”. So the Teesdale crew teamed up with the BBC again to crush their record. Guinness responded in kind, granting them the new top spot. Pretty impressive. Check out their speed run at the BBC. [BBC via ExtremeTech]
Matt L
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 10:35 AMmmmm, think of the advantages, everyone crammed on the M5 on the way to work, no ones getting tired, just pepped up on coffee… Nice!
wes
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 5:55 PMif I was stuck next to you in the jam, want to trade some of my ethiopian for your costa rican?
Matt L
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 10:48 AMThought I’d add another:
One for you, one for me, one for you, two for me.