What Makes it Green?
The team working on the car has the goal of making the car 95% biodegradable or recyclable. The steel chassis is very easily recycled. The body shell is made from hemp, something Lotus is using on their Eco Elise too. The tyres are made from potatoes and the brake pads from cashew nut shells. The engine runs on bio-fuel and uses bio-lubricants.

That’s not bad at all for a small, fun racing car.

How have they done this? A large part of the changes are in the choice of materials used to make the car. While the structural and drivetrain components remain mostly the same, sustainable materials like hemp, eco wool and sisal have been used for body panels and trim and a new water based paint has been used for the exterior finish.

On the more technical side, a new gear change light has been added, letting the driver know the optimum time to change gear, and flexible solar panels have been integrated into the car’s hemp hard top roof panel. The solar panels contribute power to the car’s electrical system, saving energy that would have come from the engine. No numbers have been provided for the amount of power generated, and given the size of the Elise’s roof panel, and the information about Toyota’s plans for solar panels in their next generation Prius, I imagine it is not much power.

[Via AutoBlog.]