#TIL — Spirit-ed Away
By Anish Michael
Imagine a weekend getaway to a picturesque valley sipping our favourite wine, sitting on the boot of our car and watching the sun set into the abyss. But what if the wine also fuelled us to our favourite spot. Well, here is something to keep our spirits high figuratively — wine-powered cars! Yes, they exist!
Prince Charles converted his Aston Martin to run on surplus English white wine and whey processed from cheese. However, this experiment of wine derived bio-ethanol stemmed from practicality and was not just a mere gimmick. The EU strictly regulates its wine industries, prohibiting the sale of excess wine in the market. It was this excess wine which was then converted into bioethanol, capable of fueling cars. A Gloucester-based biofuel company named Green Fuels — used 8,000 litres of surplus white wine from a local vineyard and distilled it to almost pure ethanol (99.8%). A little extra alcohol was collected from local cheese makers and the fuel was ready.
While experts opine this may not be a scalable solution, the UK has a policy pushing aggressively towards developing more technology using various elements to drive green miles. This whole case is an example of regulatory barriers giving us enough reason to think out of the box and improvise on policy roadblocks unrelated to mobility but used in driving sustainable mobility innovations.
So next time we pop that expensive chardonnay could we see using the extra sip to drive us around?
Today I Learnt (TIL) is a weekly series by OMI that brings you interesting nuggets of information that you didn’t know you needed.
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