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How a Coffee-Powered Car Crushed a World Landspeed Record

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnWCHxu86MI

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 66.5mph running just on coffee beans, making it the fast gasification-powered car ever.

https://gizmodo.com/coffee-powered-carpuccino-infuriates-car-lovers-coff-5487377

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 1292 degrees Fahrenheit.

https://gizmodo.com/coffee-fueled-car-is-surprisingly-practical-5166165

So all the Coffee Car had to do was beat the original record of 47mph, 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]


You can keep up with Kwame Opam, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, and occasionally Google+.

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