Environmentalist Builds A 'Green’ Cannabis Car | Ridiculous Rides
A sports car made from cannabis hemp could lead the charge in making carbon neutral vehicles. Made from the chassis of a Mazda convertible, the hemp car is bringing a new meaning to the phrase ‘green machine’ and could soon be seen on high roads around the world. The man behind the car, Bruce Dietzen from Florida, hopes his environmentally friendly automobile could help debunk the taboo behind the cannabis plant and its uses. Bruce was inspired to build the sports car after hearing about renowned industrialist, Henry Ford, using the durable material in 1941 to build the world’s first hemp car.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 When I actually started to take a look at the numbers and just how green the
00:04 car was, it was amazing to me. That's when I was convinced I have to make this car
00:08 out of cannabis.
00:11 You'll probably think that looks like a regular fiberglass car or even a steel
00:25 car just looking at it. When you go up and you touch it and you knock on it
00:28 you'll go like wow that's fiberglass but actually it's not fiberglass. We used
00:32 about typically about three plies of woven hemp and that made it rigid
00:37 enough to keep its shape. Built by Bruce Dietzen, this stunning sports car is made
00:43 from around a hundred pounds of hemp as well as being a lot lighter than
00:47 fiberglass or steel. The unusual material has another impressive quality. It's ten
00:52 times more dent resistant than steel. I'm not going to do that right now.
00:59 Although this prototype is built on a Mazda chassis, Bruce hopes that if the
01:04 car gets to production that too will be made from hemp. He took his inspiration
01:09 from Henry Ford, the great pioneer of affordable motoring who was said to have
01:14 experimented with hemp as both a material and a fuel in the 1940s. Not
01:20 everyone is familiar with Henry Ford's cannabis car. It was made not only out of
01:25 cannabis but also used soy for the resin and it also used flax and some other
01:30 things wheat straw etc. The most interesting aspect of that car is that
01:36 he used both cannabis for the strength in the body and then he also used
01:41 cannabis remnants he would make that into a fuel. His car, incredibly, was about
01:48 three times greener than today's electric vehicles because of how it was
01:52 made and then how it was fueled. Bruce estimates that building the car cost him
01:57 around $200,000 in cash and a further $200,000 in lost earnings but he hopes
02:04 his project will help him spread his environmental message. It sets an example
02:09 and it lets people know that we can make everything out of plants. That's what
02:16 Henry Ford was really out to tell everyone when he created his first
02:20 cannabis car. So you pull up buddy, car's amazing. Thank you. Amazing. This is
02:27 beautiful. We may not be able to pull up to our local gas stations right now and
02:31 say fill it up with hemp gasoline because we have to wait for these fuel
02:35 companies to catch up and start doing the right thing. It's really a symbolic
02:39 product right now but I think as we go into the future we're gonna see more and
02:43 more companies realizing that what we have to do is start making things from
02:47 plants if we're going to turn things around and start to reverse climate
02:51 change. As well as wanting to get the car to manufacture, Bruce is developing a TV
02:56 show featuring the car which will look at all the possibilities for the use of
03:00 hemp in the future. I live in Florida. Hemp is still illegal to grow in Florida.
03:07 I had to import the woven material all the way from China because we still
03:12 don't even have facilities that can make fabrics like like this out of hemp. It
03:17 has to come out of places like China. What a terrible wasted opportunity.
03:20 We could be employing all these people. We're gonna take the car around the
03:24 country and investigate these things because if cannabis can be used this
03:28 many different ways we've got to accelerate the process of making it
03:32 legal across the country and start using it more and more and more for both
03:37 ecological purposes and medical purposes etc.
03:41 you
03:44 you
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