Meet Luca, the All-Electric Car Built by Hand, Entirely From Waste

Luca is an all-electric car from the Netherlands that is made entirely out of waste. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure and all that. If that’s not enough to impress you, know that it’s also been built by hand, from scratch, by a bunch of students and it’s not even that bad in terms of performance. For what it is.

The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) from Eindhoven, Netherlands, is rated at one of the top 200 universities in the world, and this Luca project should give you a hint as to why that is. After developing the world’s first bio-structural car in 2017, students here have now created the first all-electric “waste car,” as a means to show the automotive industry as a whole that waste can and should be used in the manufacturing process.

With mankind producing some 2.1 billion tons of waste every year, recycling or incorporating some of it into new products should become norm, the students say in the official video unveiling Luca, released earlier this month and available in full below. Luca represents the culmination of 18 months of work (on and off, from what the video reveals) by a team of 22 students, not one of whom had any previous experience in building or designing cars.

This probably explains why Luca is a bit wonky and looks just like you would expect a car named that to look. It is not without a certain appeal, with its somewhat sporty body and the bright yellow color that make it stand out even before you know it’s all-electric. But above everything else, Luca is meant as a showcase for the myriad of possibilities of using waste throughout the entire manufacture process.

To build Luca, the students focused on using all sorts of waste materials, both recycled and unrecycled.

For instance, the chassis is a sandwich panel made with flax and recycled plastic, a large chunk of which was fished out of the ocean. Most of that plastic was PET bottles, with TU/e noting that PET containers can be recycled a maximum of 10 times, so using them to build a car considerably lengthens their lifespan.

The body is made of recycled ABS, which is usually found in consumer products like kitchen products, toys and televisions. The yellow color is a wrap job that can be removed when Luca needs to be recycled, too. The windows are also all made of recycling material, except for the windshield, and have a dark tint to them because of the recycling process.

The interior, such as it is, is “trash” too. Two custom-made chairs have cushions made of coconut hair and horsehair, with fabric that imitates sued in look and feel but is actually more recycled PET. The center console is made with household waste and Luca’s own production waste, like flax and ocean-fished plastic.

As far as performance goes, Luca does poorly if you compare it to current electric cars, but still better than, say, an e-bike – with the added advantage that Luca also delivers completely emissions-free rides and the peace of mind from knowing it’s repurposed waste.

Powered by two electric motors in the rear wheels, Luca reaches top speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) and has a range of 220 km (137 miles) on a single charge. Luca weighs no more than 360 kg (794 pounds) and, in its current form, can seat two people.

“With this car, we want to show that waste is a valuable material, even in complex applications like a car,” team member Matthijs van Wijk explains. Luca could help to make people more aware of their consumption behavior and thus make the first concrete steps toward a circular economy.