Apart from a crowd of amazed scientists and engineers, when the “Lina” car raced around streets of the Netherlands, local passersby were unaware of what made the vehicle so special. To them, it looked like any other midsized car, a sleek black-and-white vehicle capable of holding four riders and skillfully navigating country and city roads.
But the Lina was unlike any other car the world had ever seen – designed by a student team from the Eindhoven University of Technology, in 2017 the vehicle officially became the first car structurally made from bio-composite materials, with her chassis, body, and interior created from supplies you may find in your daily lunch.
To create the chassis of the car, the team at TU/Ecomotive utilized a combination of bio‐based composites and bio‐based plastics that offered efficient and sustainable alternatives to the typical car manufacturing process.
Nowadays, the average car is made from lightweight materials such as aluminium and carbon fibre, which aims to optimize fuel‐efficiency and reduce emissions. However, according to TU/Ecomotive, the “processing of these materials requires five to six times more energy than steel, the material which they replace.”
“Consequently, energy that is saved while driving the car is now spent during the production phase,” they explained. “In addition, recyclability of these lightweight materials is lacking significantly compared to steel.”
To solve this problem, the team wanted to create an equally-lightweight car that could be made from bio-based and bio-composite materials for the automotive industry to replicate in their processes.
Photo: HOWDO Creative Direction
The bio-based composite of the chassis of the Lina is made from flax, a plant that can be grown in any moderate climate. Flax has a strength/weight ratio similar to glass fibre, but is manufactured in a sustainable manner.
Photo: HOWDO Creative Direction
To provide stiffness to the strong composite, a honeycomb-shaped core was produced from bio‐plastic (known as PLA, and made entirely from sugar beets) and was placed in between two flax composite sheets.
Photo: HOWDO Creative Direction
The result was the Lina – an electric vehicle weighing just 310 kg (661.38 lbs), that can reach a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph) and is completely street-legal. It also boasts several other high-tech features, like sensors in the door that can detect and recognize different users (a perk for car-sharing platforms).
Photo: Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie
“We took inspiration from what nature has to offer,” the team said. “The world has ending resources. We want to apply our sustainable view onto mobility because it is such a big aspect of people’s lives, but also a big aspect of pollution. We want to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses by implementing sustainable innovations.”
And for these students – one car wasn’t enough to show the capabilities of sustainable engineering.
In the last 10 years, they’ve produced nine completely original vehicles that demonstrate a specific aspect of green technology, such as:
The “Noah” is their first “circular car”, which is sustainable in all of its life phases: production, use, and recycling. At the end of the car’s lifespan, the biocomposite can be ground and used as a raw material for other products, like a building block, while the non-organic parts of the car can be included in the existing recycling chain.
Their “Luca” embraces waste, with an exterior made of flax fibres and recycled plastic bottles retrieved from the ocean. The body of the car is also made from recycled ABS – a hard plastic used in many consumer products like toys and televisions – while the windows, interior, and the seat coverings and centre console are also made from recycled plastic and sustainable materials.
The “Zem” aims to help the world reach their Net-Zero global emissions goal, by cleaning the air while driving with direct air capture technology (DAC) that moves air through filters where the CO2 will be captured and stored.
And the “Eterna” and “Phoenix” models are both focussed on improving the lifespan of cars – the Eterna vehicle is divided into separate, changeable parts for easier repairs that can extend the lifespan of the car past 20 years, while the Phoenix is made to be replaced, with 75% closed-loop recyclable parts (compared to the industry average of 21% replaceable parts).
Photo: Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie
“With TU/ecomotive we want to inspire the bigger companies and dare them to be as innovative as we are,” they said. “With only 30 students we build a new, innovative car every 1-1.5 years, and we want to dare the big companies to achieve the same level of innovativeness.
“We showcase the possibilities on a relatively small scale so the industry is dared to implement the innovations on a bigger scale,” they continued. “The cars are a tangible representation of the hard work of a student team with students from eight different fields. If we can do it, why would a big company not be able to?”
Header image: Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie