A flat-pack cardboard car isn’t the best idea for a road car. One accident and you’re good as dead. Unless, of course, the whole world drives around in a similar flat-packing cardboard car while singing songs of joy and peace as a double rainbow flashes in the sky. Tee-hee. Anyway, this is a hydrogen-powered car made from cardboard and aluminum that can be flat-packed when you need to take it to the shop for fixing. So you can just UPS it or something.
Made by a team from Aston University, the car is the winner of the Eco-Design award in the recent 2012 Shell Eco Marathon Europe. Pushing the boundaries of sustainable design, it’s really one impressive creation. Especially if you like violent and gory deaths on the road. Local governments should seriously approve this for on-highway driving now! Just kidding…
Aston University’s hydrogen car uses sustainable materials throughout its construction, using either a plywood-cardboard composite (cardboard sandwiched between two layers of plywood) or a bio-resin material with hessian fibers. The killer element, though, is the flat-pack disassembly, allowing you to ship an entire car the way you’d transport your cardboard furniture. It uses a Nexa Ballard hydrogen fuel cell for power.
While there’s no way a car like this will ever make the roads even after a worldwide apocalypse event (my horse on a carriage will totally tank this thing if we ever run into each other), I do like the idea of a fully-collapsible vehicle. I mean, don’t you think it’d be fun to have your car flat-packed and crammed into a corner of your rental truck the next time you move to another state? Of course, assembling it back together will probably inspire another emotion, but that’s a different story.
According to the press release, a total 200 student teams from 24 countries participated in the 2012 Shell Eco Marathon Europe.