College Students Have Built the First Carbon Neutral Vehicle

(Photo: Bart van Overbeeke/Tu Ecomotive) Personal vehicles have a lot to offer: efficiency, comfort, and freedom of movement, just to name a few. They also expel atrocious amounts of carbon dioxide, which we know by now to have a dire impact on the environment. But what if we could have our cake and eat it too? Thanks to a group of college students in the Netherlands, we might someday be able to continue using personal vehicles without exacerbating climate change.

The key to the compromise is ZEM, or Zero Emission Mobility, a prototype vehicle that neutralizes its own carbon emissions as it drives. Created by a team of 35 students at the Eindhoven University of Technology, ZEM offers a potential alternative to the personal vehicles we typically see on the road today. Combustion engine vehicles emit about 4.6 metric tons of carbon each every year. While electric vehicles don’t produce emissions as they drive, the lithium battery manufacturing process produces its own carbon footprint to the tune of up to 2.5 metric tons per vehicle. ZEM, meanwhile, aims to bring that number down to zero.

(Photo: Bart van Overbeeke/Tu Ecomotive)

A pair of carbon filters behind ZEM’s front grill collect about 4.5 pounds of carbon per 20,000 miles driven. Once full, these filters can be emptied and reused, while the carbon itself can be used to produce fuel. Solar panels on the roof and hood provide up to 15 percent of ZEM’s power, supplementing the energy required to supply ZEM via traditional plug-in charging. Bi-directional charging capabilities allow the vehicle to be used as a power supply when a home is in need of solar energy.

ZEM’s manufacturing process aims to be carbon neutral, too. The vehicle’s monocoque and body are 3D printed using recycled plastics, which the students say results in almost no carbon emissions or waste material. These same materials can be recycled again later at the end of the vehicle’s life.

ZEM isn’t the students’ first rodeo. Tu Ecomotive—the students’ sustainable mobility startup—has produced seven vehicles total, including Luca, a coupe made mostly from plastic bottles found in the ocean, and Isa, an extremely lightweight car that can travel approximately 1,000 miles on a single gallon of fuel. None of these prototypes (ZEM included) have ever been introduced to the commercial market, but Tu hopes its inventions serve as a proof-of-concept for the auto industry as drivers increasingly seek out environmentally-friendly transportation.

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