Mileage Quest

An electric car with the body made of hemp is being developed by Project Eve, a group of Canadian companies in collaboration with an Alberta Crown corporation.

The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies.

- The Kestrel is an electric 4-passenger compact vehicle.
- Projected top speed is 90 kilometres per hour and a range of 40 to 160 kilometres before needing to be recharged.
- It will be powered by a motor made by TM4 Electrodynamic Systems in Quebec.
- The hemp material is being supplied by Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures.
- Polytechnic schools in Alberta, Quebec and Toronto will help build the car.
- Hemp can be readily grown in Canada and has about twice the strength of other plant fibers.
- Canada has market advantage since hemp production and hemp fiber imports are (still) illegal in the U.S.
- Henry Ford built a car made of hemp fiber and resin more than half a century ago.

Personal notes: Go Canada! How hemp got lumped into the whole Schedule 1 "marijuana" prohibition in the '30's in the U.S. is maddening -- and probably criminal at its commercial core. But that's an argument for another day. Kudos to Canada and Motive for exploring in this area. I'm pulling up a chair for this project.

As you may have gleaned from this site, I get really excited about addressing conservation of fuel on the daily commute. Collectively, it accounts for a significant percentage of our personal fuel use (no, I don't have that number). But I do know that I now burn more fuel in my garden tractor on a monthly basis in the summer, than I do in my car on my normal daily commute over the same period -- and I like it.

MQ