While this may not be the first car built with a little bit of help from wacky tobacky, it certainly is the most innovative. Former Dell executive Bruce Dietzen has been working on his own sports car, the 2017 Renew, with the environment in mind, and as we can see here, he’s been thinking way outside the box. With goals set on using eco-friendly materials, the man was able to build a car body that’s made up by 100 pounds of cannabis, all covered in an extremely hard resin.
Jay Leno drove the Renew on his show, Jay Leno’s Garage, Wednesday night and debuted the car to the rest of the world. During the broadcast, Dietzen gave the audience some insight to what makes cannabis such a viable building material for the future of cars.
According to him, these tightly woven cannabis leaves make the car’s body ten times stronger than steel, an attribute which he soon tests out by banging on the hood over and over. Leno even gives it a go, all without damaging the Renew’s bodywork. Additionally, the manufacturing process used to construct the car is “carbon neutral”, meaning it doesn’t tax the atmosphere with any extra, harmful gasses.
While being constructed from hemp certainly helps the car’s publicity, it has also hurt its advancement in some ways. “It’s kind of a double edged sword” says Leno. “The marijuana connection garners the interest, but then people don’t take you seriously.”
Dietzen does note, however, that he isn’t the first to make a car made out of cannabis. The granddaddy of the project was Henry Ford, who produced the original weed-on-wheels in 1941. By taking from Ford’s findings, Dietzen was able to modernize the efforts and bring it up to speed for the auto industry in 2017.
While this may not be the cheapest way to build a car, it certainly is efficient. Dietzen claimed that he has approximately $200,000 invested into the project, meaning that it would be a pretty costly venture given its use of exotic materials and unique production methods.
“No one said investing in the future is going to be cheap,” he said.
The inventor has also been reportedly working on an alternative fuel for vehicles with Colorado-based company Cool Tech, further supporting his agenda of bettering the environment through automotives.
