Insane Lemon Battery Used to Power Volkswagen Electric Supercar... Sort Of

Cars and lemons being mentioned in the same sentence usually imply somebody bought a broken motor. But here, the word "lemon" is used referring to the fruit, which can be used to produce electricity.

Copper and zinc strips were cut out of sheet metal on a water jet. These were then assembled into large racks for the lemons to be impaled on. Don't worry, as the fruit were Class 2 - overripe, misshapen or too small to be sold commercially.

The two metals have special properties which in combination with the juice of the lemon creates an electrical current. The problem is not an amazingly strong one, which is why they use a lot of lemons here. Our rough count says they used around 1,200 lemons, but you're welcome to count each one.

Even so, the electricity provided is less than that of a regular AA battery. Mark and his buddy put on another experiment, which uses the electrolysis current to lift a bag of lemons, which then helps squeeze some lemon juice. It's not very useful for the race car, but entertaining to watch anyway.

So how do over a thousand lemons end up powering the Volkswagen supercar? The company sent over a big battery to which Mack adds a little bit of current. But because he didn't want to make such a small contribution, the guy makes a fun zip line regenerative braking rig and "uses" children to make electricity. The lemons turn into lemonade, which in turn powers the children.

But even that's not enough, and the sun is revealed as the ideal source of electricity. Because it turns out, everything from lemons to fossil fuel energy comes from that glowing ball in the sky. But you can't use lemons to power a car.

And before we forget, the Volkswagen I.D. R just set a new overall Pikes Peak record - 7 mins 57 seconds.