Car Parts Made From Hemp

[Weedpipe]

(Natural News) PSA, the French manufacturer for Peugeot and Citroen, has recently initiated its Green Materials Plan. This plan intends to increase car parts made from natural materials 600 percent by 2015. They are making a few parts now that are based on flax and hemp.

PSA's Green Materials Plan focuses on three areas: Biopolymers to replace plastics derived from oil; Natural fibers from flax and hemp mixed with other materials, such as wood chips; And recycled materials from shredded plastic bottles mixed with glass fibers.

The plastic interior door panels made by PSA are already 50 percent flax fibers pressed with wood chips. Other parts, including mirror and windshield wiper mountings, use hemp instead of glass fiber in their material mix.

Oil based plastics in cars make up to 20 percent of a car's weight on average. Of that 20 percent, only six percent is currently green or cellulose based. PSA's goal is to increase that six percent to 30 percent of the plastic used.

Hemp is legal in France, so further advances with hemp for car parts may unfold. Laurent Bechin, PSA's natural-fibers specialist, pointed out that the hemp used does not produce marijuana. "It would need about two tons of this material to produce one joint", he quipped.

Hemp and flax for building cars is not new. It was actually done in the USA by Henry Ford while hemp was legal in 1941. The experimental model's body was seventy percent made of fibers from field straw, cotton fibers, hemp, and flax. The other 30 percent consisted of soy meal and bio-resin fillers.

Ford's successful prototype was tagged as the vegetable or hemp car.

Ford's motivation was green-based for two reasons. He wanted to increase agricultural involvement for materials in the automotive industry to improve the farmers' economic plight. And he wanted to build lighter, stronger cars with better fuel efficiency.

The car weighed 2000 pounds compared to 3000 pounds for similar all-steel automobiles. In 1941, ethanol had a higher octane and was cheaper to produce than gasoline. Ford designed the car to run on partial or complete ethanol fuels.

But steel and oil magnates lobbied government to ensure Ford's vision would never manifest.



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Source: Natural News Network
Author: Paul Louis
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Website:Car parts made from hemp

 

[BWC BayArea]

Oil based plastics in cars make up to 20 percent of a car's weight on average. Of that 20 percent, only six percent is currently green or cellulose based. PSA's goal is to increase that six percent to 30 percent of the plastic used.

If that's the case they can damn near make a Saturn from hemp.

 

[Ray Gunn]

Cheech and Chong had a van that was made out of hemp and if you remember, it caught on fire.

 

[tricome]

Cheech and Chong's van was made out of buds. That's how they were smuggling it. I love it when it starts to catch and the cop pulls them over. That cop ate so many hot dogs!
I saw a video of Ford's hemp car. They were hitting the fender with a baseball bat and they couldn't even dent it, or damage it in any way! Good stuff!

 

[michaelkaer]

I remember the little lesson the Sarge gives and shows the picture of a small TV set that is supposed to be made of pot and said $1,000,000 in pot is in that TV. One of the detectives asked if it was inside the TV and the the Sarge said it is the whole TV. That is when the light went on that they where looking for pot that is no longer in the form of bales and baggies.