Plastic Love

The latest installment to the carporn list isn't electric or hybrid (it's a diesel Hyundai, for chrissakes), but having a body made of 85% PET (polyethylene terephthalate, the stuff of plastic pop bottles is 'upcycled' to make it) makes it very light and could remove huge amounts of otherwise one-time-use plastic from the waste stream. Combine that with a hybrid engine and you'd have an even better QarmaQ (is that Car-Mac? Care-Make? Karma-Q?). Another feature is the use of molded resins and Lexan films to replace the need for paint, the most polluting part of the manufacturing process.



The kicker for me is this: the body is made with two resins developed through GE's impressive ecomagination effort. Couldn't an American car company have leveraged this kind of thinking to partner with GE? American companies working together to address fuel efficiency and use less oil in making the plastic, etc. - they could have an eagle in the commercial and everything.

Well it turns out they have. GM's Volt concept car, I learned from the GE site, also uses Xenoy IQ, one of the resins in the QarmaQ, in the hood and doors. As its name implies, it can also be electric (and integrates a modular engine design - see the link), so in that case could be even hotter than the Hyundai (using my unquantified and unpublished carporn meter). Add to that its name's pronouncability and we've got a contender. However, limited use of the plastics (it's a concept car, boys, go crazy) and a positively staid design mean that the QarmaQ still nudges it aside in concept heaven. Good start, though, Chevy - way to keep up with Hyundai.