These days, absolutely everybody is making an electric car. Lamborghini is working on one, despite being among the last guardians of the N/A V12 engine, and so are other carmakers like Aston Martin and even BMW's M division. They all have their own survival in mind, but secondary to that is sustainability for the planet on which we all live. Making the world cleaner should be everyone's goal, but some have taken that to an extreme that is difficult to stomach. And that's where the power for today's EV feature comes from - your excrement. Meet a sewage treatment company's innovative approach to zero waste.
As you can see, the company in question has used the Hyundai Kona Electric to get its endeavors out there. Urban Utilities is the name of the Queensland, Australia-based company, and this isn't its first vehicle "powered by poo" as it is so eloquently put. Four years ago, UU introduced an electric Mitsubishi that is also powered by crap. Thus, this Hyundai has been classily dubbed "Number Two" - pun fully intended. According to a spokesperson, it takes a lot of, er, processed food waste to power a car: "On average, one person's daily habits can generate enough electricity to make the car travel around 450 meters."
That sounds like next to nothing, but the point here isn't to make a commercially viable product that can be sold to the public. Instead, it's to show that even waste product is wasted. And just to make it clear, the car isn't directly powered by poo. Rather, that waste product is converted to electricity on the plant's site. The car is then plugged in and is thus indirectly running on the potential energy that your body failed to convert.
The spokesperson elaborates on the benefits of reusing waste, citing a saving of US$1.3 million: "Last financial year we produced enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 4,000 homes for an entire year. Poo power doesn't only help keep our cars on the road, it also helps us run our two largest wastewater treatment plants."
Will this idea soon catch on elsewhere? Probably not, but it'll definitely stick.