This fully electric car called Zem has created by 3D-printed from recycled plastics. Zem also has an interior made of pineapple and a dashboard made of cooking oil. “Zem” stands for “Zero Emission Mobility,” this car does not emit carbon. It also has a great exterior design. This Zem car has a pair of carbon filters in the front grille that contributes to cleaning the atmosphere by removing about 4.5lb of Carbon-dioxide per 20,000 miles.

That means ten Zem cars remove the same amount of carbon as a mature tree absorbs annually. Solar panels are also installed on the Zem’s roof, and those provide about 15% of the car’s energy needs. It has a traditional charging point at the rear that completes the rest of the car’s energy needs.

It was created by a team of 35 undergraduates at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Carbon neutrality is built into every aspect of the car. The Monocoque and body panels are created by additive manufacturing. “These parts of Zem are 3D-printed to get the desired shape and almost no waste produced,” TU/ecomotive has stated.

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The following submission statement was provided by /u/Anderson069:

This fully electric car called Zem has created by 3D-printed from recycled plastics. Zem also has an interior made of pineapple and a dashboard made of cooking oil. “Zem” stands for “Zero Emission Mobility,” this car does not emit carbon. It also has a great exterior design. This Zem car has a pair of carbon filters in the front grille that contributes to cleaning the atmosphere by removing about 4.5lb of Carbon-dioxide per 20,000 miles.

That means ten Zem cars remove the same amount of carbon as a mature tree absorbs annually. Solar panels are also installed on the Zem’s roof, and those provide about 15% of the car’s energy needs. It has a traditional charging point at the rear that completes the rest of the car’s energy needs.

It was created by a team of 35 undergraduates at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Carbon neutrality is built into every aspect of the car. The Monocoque and body panels are created by additive manufacturing. “These parts of Zem are 3D-printed to get the desired shape and almost no waste produced,” TU/ecomotive has stated.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11motn4/meet_the_worlds_cleanest_fully_electric_car_that/jbitola/

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/03/17/power-one-tree-very-air-we-breathe#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Arbor%20Day,and%20release%20oxygen%20in%2

That says a mature tree will absorb 48 pounds of co2 per year. CO2 is 20% carbon by weight, so that is 9.6 pounds.

If the car is capturing 4.5 pounds of carbon per 20k miles, then sounds like it is really more like 25-35% of what a tree does for normal driving distances

[Edit] Well, not even since the article says 4.5 pounds of co2, not carbon. In that case, it is more like 5-7%!

>“The Zem electric car is also home to bi-directional charging that can be used to charge other items as well. Zem will look like an external battery to your home, providing green energy when needed,” TU/ecomotive has stated.

I can see this being very useful in my home country, Canada. On the east coast the frequency of hurricanes, ice storms and other events causing power outages is increasing. Portable generators have always been popular but many people are buying portable battery packs so they can at least boil some water and make tea or soup while waiting for the power to come back on.

I hope that this kind of bi-directional charging becomes standard for all vehicles in the future; it could be very helpful and lifesaving in the case of emergency situations in natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, etc.

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That's why they said ten of these cars would equal 1 tree

You are right-- I missed the "ten" in front :(

Though it is still an exaggeration since (1) 4.5 pounds is (a little) less than a tenth of 48 pounds, and (2) 20,000 miles per year is certainly not a typically driven car; that is likely 95th-98th percentile.

In the US 12-15k is more typical and I'd guess the sort of folks who really care about the environment tend toward the lower end of that (choosing not to drive when not needed and combining trips).

Looks like ~14-18 equally one tree is closer to reality, and that is before comparing the CO2 output to build the system into the car and dealing with the used filters to I guess what the CO2 costs are to get a tree planted (in a way that it'll at least survive to maturity)

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Yes but if every electric vehicle had this feature, it would really add up, especially as EVs start to take increasing market share

So they are making an electric car less efficient by putting an energy draining device on the front? Fun concept but the thermodynamics don't work in their favor. It would be more energy efficient to just plug the carbon capture device into your house and skip the charging step.

Why stop there... lets put one on every vehicle in the US.

The average American driver drives 13,476 miles per year[1]. Times ~240 licensed drivers is 3.2T miles driven.

At 4.5 pounds of CO2 per 20,000 miles, that is 728M pounds of CO2 per year.

At 48 pounds per mature tree, that is like 15M trees.

Just for comparison, adding 15M trees, would add 0.0066% to the total number of trees in the US.

Or another way to look at it; 728M pounds of CO2 is what you get from burning 36.4M gallons of gasoline. For reference, in the US we burn about that much gasoline every 144 minutes on average.

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Even before you consider actually producing these devices, installing them and handling the used filters, they are rounding error on rounding error.

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[1]https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-average-miles-driven-per-year#:~:text=Calculating%20Your%20Mileage%20And%20Average,clocks%2013%2C476%20miles%20per%20year.

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>So they are making an electric car less efficient by putting an energy draining device on the front?

It's an absolutely absurd marketing gimmick.

If we consider that the filters need to be changed, the loss in efficiency and the absurd amount of these cars that it would take to equal a wooded park or small forest it makes no sense.

Example:

Central Park in NY has 18000 trees. Even if we accept that ten of these cars over 20 000 miles equal an average tree - that would mean you'd need 180 000 of these cars driving 20k miles per year to equal just central park.

Saving money on the filter and being more efficient and just planting more trees would be vastly more useful.

Yes, that's what would happen once a majority of vehicles in the road are electric. You have to roll out these types of regulations slowly for them to work well. Targeting it at EVs to start makes sense because the manufacturers are consumers are aligned in the interest of going green. Only after a significant proportion of vehicles have this feature can you then extend the regulation to gas powered vehicles, when public opinion is on the government's side and can shame/boycott manufacturers into committing to the new feature. Otherwise, they will find the cheapest way to implement it, or lobby against it, or self sabatoge the feature (like making it difficult or expensive for the owner to maintain) in order to eventually turn public opinion and have the regulation removed.

>It's an absolutely absurd marketing gimmick.

Doesn't matter, now that the majority accept climate change is an issue the car manufactures have to invent and push the idea that "cars are part of the solution".

Expect a lot of these stories in the coming years and very little challenge to the viability of the ideas in them.

This is the shit that lets me know innovation isn't gonna save us from climate change

But that was the point I was making -- EVEN IF you could get these installed in every vehicle IMMEDIATELY (which we can't) and EVEN IF there was virtually no CO2 emissions related to building them and installing them and taking care of used filters (and there would be some), they'd have almost literally no impact.

It would be equivalent to enacting some sort of legislation that would reduce the average annual driving for Americans from 13,476 miles to 13,472 miles.

Sure, it is better if people drive even 4 miles less than they do now and every little bit helps, but in this instance we are talking about an absurdly tiny little bit.

>This Zem car has a pair of carbon filters in the front grille that contributes to cleaning the atmosphere by removing about 4.5lb of Carbon-dioxide per 20,000 miles.

LOL oh boy a whole 4 pounds and all I have to do is drive across North America a bit over 3 times!!

Having the filter on the front makes the car less efficient, requiring more energy, producing co2. Probably the total effect is 0 or negative.

there is this crazy invention, that can take a whole bunch of people where they want, its dirt cheap, and done right never has traffic. Its called a train, and you can even put them underground!

Public transport is cool folks, this is a rich persons play thing.

At this point carbon capture is more a gimmick than a feature. But the recycled materials are very nice, until you take a look how long those materials will last. Dunno if they can outlive aluminium and plastic.

Except trees don’t need to get plugged in.

Carbon capture is a scam

If some boffin manages to create a car that can entirely create its energy from photosynthesis then suddenly it drives converting CO2 to oxygen.

That I would hail a breakthrough miracle.

But you saved the planet.

Lots of real cars from real manufacturers do this, including the Nissan Leaf (although it's only on fleet vehicles), F-150 Lightning, Hyundai Ioniq 5/Kia EV6 and the Outlander PHEV. You can also get kits from places like https://www.evextend.com/ for other cars.

It's the classic case of "if you buy our pineapple, we'll give 1% of the price towards offsetting the damage to the environment that is caused by transporting it from another continent". Slavoj Žižek calls this a genius capitalist idea - you do nothing to solve the problem, but by spending some money you get to feel good, like you're contributing.

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I also doubt producing and constantly replacing the CaOH2 or LiOH filters is carbon neutral.

It isn't a "marketing gimmick", it was done by students. Like, they built it with parts that they could use in other projects once they tore it down...

>"cars are part of the solution"

I mean zero carbon emitting cars are at least a part of the solution. Personal vehicles are far too efficient for many applications to ever be fully replaced. On top of that the world isn't going to perform 50 years-worth of public transport infrastructure construction in the next 10 years.

So yeah, electric cars / trucks are one part of the sustainable future we want to target (of course the smaller part of it they are the easier some things like city management, waste management etc. become).

It's just that this gimmick solution in the article makes no sense.

With the math you provided earlier, it should be equivalent to driving 144 hrs less for every car. It doesn't seem like much, true. But when combined with every vehicle also producing 0 emissions and consuming 0 gas in the hypothetical where all vehicles are EV, it then contributes to negative emissions. This sort of regulation in a vacuum does not make much of an impact. It requires other changes. But 100 of these incremental improvements would make a difference.

Perhaps "marketing" was the wrong word and "promotion gimmick" would be correct.

The point is that it's a pointless, dead-end feature that was only implemented to generate superficial interest.

I don't really judge. Reasearchers / universities / etc. also constantly have to make use of hype to get grants / funding etc. But this is really pointless bait.

144 **MINUTES**, not **HOURS**. And to save you the math, that is out of 525,000 minutes per year. literally measured in hundredths of a percent.

The environmental impact of switching from an ICE to an EV is literally hundreds to thousands of times greater than the impact of having versus not having this carbon sequestration device.

It takes 100 similar improvements just to get to rounding error!

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What's next? A nickel per hour increase to minimum wage to help the poor?

I don't think it's meant to be a sellable product, the undergrads built something for a resume. It got attention and some big company will hire them now.

They are trying to make cars energy efficient but it won't happen. That's not how physics works. We need public transportation, THATS the solution. And we don't need to attach a carbon vacuum in the front of it either.

Zero Emission Mobility

Yeah ok sure.

It's not that either. It's just a class project. They made a car that captures more carbon than it emits.

It's incredibly cynical to think that this project was used to get money instead of teach students and build their skills. Sure, nothing here is all that useful and practical. But maybe one of these students will go on to create something that is.

And like, they accomplished it as freaking undergrads from scratch. It's not like this can't ever be improved upon.

This whole thread is ridiculously anti-innovation.

These posters would have stopped building computers with the TRS-80 because it wasn’t advanced enough, and there was no chance that anyone anywhere could improve the concept over time.

Yeah, doesn't an ICE exhaust that in like 30 miles?

The problem is that moving a big thing fast and for long distances is energy intensive. So solar power is just not enough if you are expecting it to be self contained on a personal vehicle.

More to your point though, photosynthesis is an energy capture mechanism. In order to derive mechanical energy from the molecules produced (sugar and oxygen) the car would then need to react the sugar with oxygen. So in effect, you'd just be making a bad solar panel with extra steps.

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It’s actually not the first of its kind: https://youtu.be/M4g4WBo-5fc

It was made by undergrads. Calm down.

Thinking about the maths of it, I reckon a car with current level solar panels built into the roof would be a serious suppliment to the energy required.

I'm in the north of England and the 2.5kW, suboptimal panels on my roof generate about 15kWh on a sunny day.

Going by the size of the panel, I reckon at leat 1kW of capacity could be embedded on the average car roof, boot and bonet.

So a sunny day would then provide 5-6kW. So that's like 15-20 miles of driving?

Obviously the car would need external energy for the most part, but I don't think that's an insignificant amount of energy. And considering a concern for electric cars is still range and availability of charge points, knowing that you can get free mileage just by parking in an unshaded location for a few hours would be a big selling point to me.

I imagine the electrics of it are the most difficult part though.

I feel like you're mistaking my conversation as an argument so I'm gonna stop here. Congrats on winning the argument.

Yeah I’m not sure physics allow us to live modern lives and actually improve the planet back to a pre-human state. Or even close to it. Can we slow down our trashing of the planet? Absolutely. But there’s no way we can reverse course by engineering our way out of it.

Just a reminder to the downers in here: advancement starts with the least effective, worst version of a thing. But from that start you learn a bunch and make the next version, which is better.

This is neat. Is it a functional solution to carbon capture? No, or rather not yet. But it’s smart kids stepping up to fight in the right direction.

Some of y’all would have stood on the beaches of Kitty Hawk and said, “All that to go less than a hundred feet? I’ll stick with my HORSE thank you very much!”

Go get ‘em kids. You’re going to save the world. You have to. The rest of us are going to be shit talking you from our couches on Reddit apparently.

For a super efficient car your math seems about right. A gallon (~4L) of gasoline is roughly 33kW/h of energy, so 100-120 miles per gallon equivalent car is possible, but difficult (sorry for US units, that's how we measure car efficiency).

It may be good as a supplement like you said, or can possibly keep the AC running or something like that.

Electric is great, but I still believe we need hydrogen cars. It provides us with 2 benefits. One, it is split cleanly to make electricity. The other is that it also has water as a byproduct. And with the push to end fossil fuel use for cars, we could convert gas stations into hydrogen stations, with another added benefit. A tank could be added to hydrogen cars to collect the water produced. When you go to a hydrogen station to refuel, you can pump out the water in the same action to be collected by the station, and sent back into the public water system adding back some of our water we will be losing through climate change.

If they learn from it and can transfer it to other uses it is a step forward. Cracks me up how many people dont understand research and learning. They are not building a production car they are trying new and different things to find out what works and what doesn't. In new idea developement you try things tthat are not the norm so you can push technology forward.

6-7 miles in typical car, or 15 miles in yaris hybrid

To put things in perspective, using a single gallon of gas emits 19.64lbs of CO2 (the weight comes mostly from the oxygen in the air).

After 20k miles, you gather up as much co2 as about burning 1/4 of a gallon of gas. Making and hauling this equipment around in the car certainly burns many times more energy than it can possibly save in CO2.

The amount of cynacism in this thread is absolutely wild. These kids (they're freaking undergrads!) aren't claiming they are saving the world here. Like, here are a couple of quotes from these kids.

>It is really still a proof-of-concept, but we can already see that we will be able to increase the capacity of the filter in the coming years.

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>We want to tickle the industry by showing what is already possible. If 35 students can design, develop, and build an almost carbon-neutral car in a year, then there are also opportunities and possibilities for the industry.

> by spending some money you get to feel good, like you're contributing.

Similarly how I feel when I eat three times as much as I need to...

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This is great! We should be starting to look at net-negative carbon solutions. Even if it's only a little bit, with the amount of cars on the road this sort of thing will add up. If the filter or capture device is unpowered or only uses the kinetic energy of the air it's pushing through that's even better. Hopefully it's not something that takes a lot of maintenance too.

I love the idea of turning all those little sources of carbon emitting terraforming cars into carbon sippers as part of an overall solution!

Haha lol, so just once a year, think a bit ahead so you save one grocery trip, and you're already better off

Just so you know, when it comes to car efficiency the UK uses miles per gallon. Petrol stations however show prices by the litre, oh and we use miles and yards for distance.

TlDR: mpg is fine to use with us.

> Public transport is cool folks,

Convincing others of that is unfortunately a lost cause...

> This whole thread is ridiculously anti-innovation.

Innovations are only good if they make sense. This is so ridiculously inefficient that it's absolutely an abhorrent attempt at a solution just so they can get more money or whatever they are after. You cannot go against the laws of physics by "innovating".

> Just a reminder to the downers in here: advancement starts with the least effective, worst version of a thing.

That's like saying "let's support faster-than-light travel innovations". The problem here is not that this is inefficient - the problem is it cannot be efficient enough to even remotely make sense. You cannot go against physics and claim that's "innovation".

Solar(+battery) at home and charge there. That's where things are going for charging completely green in the near future as grids get greener every day.

On the road, batteries at the site of the charger that refill passively when not in use, supplemented by grid power when needed.

> That means ten Zem cars remove the same amount of carbon as a mature tree absorbs annually

What is the fastest growing tree (or plant, for that matter) out there? In terms of absorbing CO2.

Yeah I went off Google's estimate of electric cars tend to get 3-4 miles per kWh (which I guess will actually vary massively)

And the car panel will be less optimal as the panels will be flat. Although unlike roof panels you could potentially move the car around to stay in the sun for longer.

For me, this would actually be an ideal car. I need a car for where I live, but I only use it a couple of times a week and almost always journeys of 5-6 miles or less. I'd only need to charge the car from mains in the depths of winter!

Your about right. Take a look at https://aptera.us/.

You're assuming that the electricity is generated using fossil fuels?

I would actually argue that the process of innovation requires that, at least in the early stages, the ideas being combined make no sense at all.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/04/02/19/Anne-Woods.jpg?quality=75&width=640&auto=webp

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Yup. Makes me think of a ad that comes on the radio. Boils down to "our hybrid car uses 40% less gas", well yeah of course it does because 40% of it's power comes from the electric motor, so your car isn't technically better. Know what reduces gas usage by an even bigger amount? Not having the car in the first place.

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Carbon capture itself is just bad, because it allows people to think that we don't need to reduce the carbon that is being released because it can just be captured anyways.

The only way that carbon capture makes sense is if we first stop putting carbon in the air to begin with, then we can focus on capturing the carbon that remains and isn't increasing.

Focusing on carbon capture just allows other people to pollute more.

Does it use child slave labor to harvest the materials for the battery?

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It's not a bad idea for short distance driving. Even if it takes 2-3 Years to remove a Tree's worth of carbon, it is a valid technology to look at.

It is not the solution, not the magic bandaid. But it's a tool and to scoff at it doesn't help the problem when we're supposedly already past a point of no return.

Its not an marketing gimmick,.it was a study project by undergratuates. It does not need to be a viable product.

Aaaand I'm sure it'll be like $200,000 if it's ever produced for the general market. :(

I will never be able to have these nice and ethical things.

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So e.g. when people started innovating regarding the Apollo spacecraft, they said "let's try this idea that surely, by the laws of physics, cannot get us to the Moon"? That... doesn't make sense.

They would be better off putting a peat bog in the trunk.

Also, I wonder how much CO2 is emitted manufacturing those CO2 filters...

Inventing and innovating are two different things.

Innovation requires working knowledge in multiple, disparate fields of study, then using that knowledge to connect methods/ideas/resources that were not previously related.

You think the Apollo vehicles just showed up?

There were dozens of rocket launches before we tried putting humans in space, and all of them resulted in lessons learned and how to improve the next iteration.

The rockets themselves? Based on military-driven missile technology. The missiles could not deliver humans to and from space, but they were the unrelated starting point for putting people on the moon.

Yes, "marketing" was a poor word implying this will be for sale. It is however, as you stated, promotion of the university and the team.

While the project as a whole, the materials design and the car as a whole is absolutely fantastic, the carbon filtration part is a deliberate promotional gimmick that has no other academic or pratical purpose.

The statement by the team lead from the article: "We are cleaning the air while driving" and the fact that they put the filters in the car, most likely knowing they are just making it less efficient points to the idea that it was something done to catch attention (and was obviously successful to some degree). That is, of course, both an understandable and often necessary thing to do to promote the university etc.

I just wanted to remark on how pointless of an addition to the project car it is.

Oh thanks, I was about to ask but I accidentally ignored the parentheses at first.

That's kind of unintuitive, and scary.

None of that matters if the initial conditions are provably unfavorable. It's like trying to innovate on perpetuum mobile when we know it is impossible, by the laws of physics, for it to work. Your examples are all in a distinct category because we had no reason to believe they were impossible.

And how much CO2 is made to charge that car

Are you thinking a liter of fuel, not a gallon? A Yaris does way better than 15mpg (unless it’s got a LS swap, maybe 🤪)

The amount of energy generated is lower than the loss of efficiency due to the added weight of a solar panel. It’s significantly more efficient to mount a solar panel on top of a pole wherever you spend the most time parked (house for personal vehicle, office for business vehicle).

Just so I understand your point:

You’re saying that this group of students has access to all known and available scientific information and expertise to independently conceive of a way to use our vehicles to diminish our carbon footprint.

However, they failed to recognize that the method that they chose is an impossible dead end which will be of no practical use to anyone. In short, a complete waste of time and resources.

>It's incredibly cynical to think that this project was used to get money instead of teach students and build their skills.

It's not cynical at all. It's quite standard and not something bad.

It's always both with projects like these - they are both learning opportunities for students and a way to promote both your students and the skills and prestige of the university.

It's the same with all manner of student competotions and projects from the Putnam competition, the various DARPA challenges etc. The more a university promotes itself the more grant money and industry cooperation it's likely to get. It's actually good for both the students and the university as a whole.

I'm not saying either of these things.

I'm saying, compared to actually building a car, it's way easier to do the math about the maximum possible benefit and realize it's so tiny that building that car is guaranteed to be at best pointless and at worst a net negative for the environment - which it turned out to be and, worse, it will probably motivate others to waste their time and resources as well, which in turn will cause further unnecessary damage to our planet, contrary to what they set out to do, which is ironic.

With that realization you can conclude that some of the following happened:

- They did not do the math and built a car. Not a wise sequence of steps, especially for someone who is smart and determined enough to be capable of building a car

- They did the math and decided to build the car anyway. Even less wise

In any case, calling this "innovation" is... similarly not wise.

It's a fun exercise and building a car is obviously a really good achievement on its own, but as far as being touted as a solution to our CO2 problem, this is bonkers. Hypocrisy is a good thing to avoid.

>It's the same with all manner of student competotions and projects from the Putnam competition, the various DARPA challenges etc. The more a university promotes itself the more grant money and industry cooperation it's likely to get. It's actually good for both the students and the university as a whole.

This is very different than what OP is saying.

>The point is that it's a pointless, dead-end feature that was only implemented to generate superficial interest.

This is what's cynical.

The front of that car is ugly as FUUUUCK.

>This is what's cynical.

Really ?

If the carbon filtration as a feature of the car is not a dead-end what possible research or practial purpose does it serve then ?

If it does not have a research or pratical purpose - why add it ?

The student team and their mentors would obviously know this as well. The only conclusion I can see is to add a feature to the project car that would make it more interesting in a superficial way (i.e. with no deeper technical purpose). In other words they added "something cool" - carbon removal to a carbon neutral car.

The fact that the feature is used to make the project car seem more interesting is literally in the article in the description of the team lead.

It's also a central feature they spotlight on the project page: https://www.tuecomotive.nl/our-family/zem/

>This is very different than what OP is saying.

I don't think it is. This is a decently big project with quite a few sponsors and the university team has been building cars like this since 2013. Having the knowledge and resources to maintain such a team and a string of somewhat big projects which result in vehicles that are showcases of knowledge - that's a big thing for a university. It's a great pipeline for students to industry, attracts students, offers great learning opportunities and generally generates both press and a dose of prestige, just like the other examples I used.

People on reddit are incessantly critical of everything they see.

Even important advances that might be major parts of our ability to fight climate change, the comments will be entirely negative and suggesting that it was a complete waste.

Just the culture of the website I guess.

Meanwhile according to the IPCC the only way we reach any of our climate goals is by using carbon capture.

Hmm, who to trust, the IPCC or reddit know it alls?

>4.5lbs of Carbon-dioxide per 20,000 miles

Great! This will really offset the 4.2 metric TONS of co2 that a typical gas car emits every year.

In all seriousness, the magnitude of continuous co2 emissions over the life of an ice vehicle underscores the need to rapidly transition to EVs.

Well, disagree.

Every good idea starts somewhere, and I’d love to see this one go somewhere.

Out of curiosity, are you an engineer or a manager or both?

I didn't know that, thanks!

Yeah, I have a home-built kit for my Chevy Volt that has kept my sump pump, furnace, router, and freezer going during storms.

> Well, disagree.

Laws of physics don't care about you agreeing or not.

> Every good idea starts somewhere,

Agreed. This one is not a good idea.

> and I’d love to see this one go somewhere.

So you want to harm our planet even more? Well that's... not wise.

> Out of curiosity, are you an engineer or a manager or both?

Engineer. Out of curiosity, what does it matter?

Hmm, going by Googling the weight of a Tesla (1600 - 2000kg), and going by the 100W camping solar panel I have that ways 3kg...

I could maybe fit 6 of these rectangles on the roof of a car, so 18kg for 600W. 600W would generate 3kWh/sunny day.

So we've increased the weight by 1%, and get about 5% extra range per sunny day.

Seems like a decent trade off? You could probably even offset the weight by reducing battery size a little, as you need to carry less charge if you can top up power as you go?

Self charging from solar allays the fear that if you can't charge your car you won't be completely stranded. Fitting solar charging stations everywhere is a different use case really.

Removes the CO2 front the front and shits rainbows from the back. I don’t see this as a practical thing

A gallon of gasoline adds about 20 pounds of CO2. Twenty gallons, a ton. This vehicle compensates for 5 ounces of gasoline in 20,000 miles.

Isn’t that only a problem if your energy source produces carbon? Like if I charge it off a coal power plant then try to re-capture it, then it’s net more CO2 than just removing it. But if it’s charged from wind power then it captures carbon and costs wind. Still a net benefit for CO2 levels, no?

Fantastic. Now do one better and simply stop existing.

I know for a lot of people the car is at this stage a necessary evil, but it’s an evil nonetheless. Trying to engineer a car that fixes the issues caused by the car is like trying to binge eat your way out of diabetes by sticking to almonds or something.

The Netherlands of all places hold the answer already, work on that some more.

The average human exhales about 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide on an average day.

Meet the car that no one will own in the next 20 years...

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This is absolutely a project that would have merged with a SPAC in 2020 and hit a $50 billion valuation.

Does it also reverse heavy metal soil contamination from mining lithium?

Have two batteries, one at home being trickle charged by solar panels and one in the car being used. Make battery swapping easy to do and just swap them every night.

I know that some education systems in the world are trash, but sometimes good ones have you do things to teach you skills, not just learn how to repeat a process.

>If it does not have a research or pratical purpose - why add it ?

They were tasked with creating a carbon neutral car. That's one of the things they did to get there.

That wouldn’t be viable for the same reason that animals don’t have chloroplasts. It would take more energy to carry them around than they could possibly produce, which is why plants are sedentary.

You sound like every manager I’ve ever brought an idea to.

It’s reassuring that you’re an engineer, but I still disagree with your approach to innovation.