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A team of British scientists who invented a coffee-powered car found that the product made a better drink than a fuel source when their prototype broke down several times during its maiden voyage.
Inventors from the BBC’s science show ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ set out early on Thursday 11 March in their attempt to drive their prototype the 338 kilometres from London to Manchester. The car, a modified Volkswagen Sirocco nicknamed the ‘Car-puccino’, broke down four times during the journey before eventually arriving at Manchester’s ‘Big Bang Science Fair’ late in the evening.
The gasification process which powered the car – converting ground coffee into gases at high temperatures – created a lot of fine dust which clogged the inner workings of the vehicle. The invention recorded a fuel efficiency rate of around 4.8 kilometres per kilogram of ground coffee – the equivalent of about 35 espressos per kilometre.
This may sound impressive but overall the journey cost around 25-50 times more than using regular petrol, so bean-counting bookkeepers won’t be changing their travel plans anytime soon.
"It's not the most reliable form of transport, but we knew that," Francesca Bennett, a member of the team travelling with Stansfield, said. "This is the first time this has been done and it wasn't about reliability. It was about energy and making people think about how they use it."
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