Do you need coffee to get you up and running? Well a car which shares that trait with many people has just broken the world speed record for organic waste-fuelled vehicles.

The British-made car, a modified Rover SD1, managed to beat the previous title holder by reaching an average speed of 66.5mph. The vehicle pushed from the top spot, a wood-pellet fuelled car, only managed 47mph by comparison.


The engineers of the caffeine-fuelled car used waste coffee granules which would otherwise be dumped into landfill.

This coffee car isn’t the only one around though. BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory showed a similar vehicle off on their show. It was a Volkswagen Sirocco and it is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the organic waste-fuelled vehicle to have travelled the furthest (London to Manchester).

One of the presenters explained how the car worked. “It’s like an old charcoal burner. The coffee is heated up like charcoal. Then the combustion gases, which are generally carbon dioxide and water vapour, are reduced by hot carbon to carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

“This is then filtered by a cyclone filter and a rock wool filter and cooled down by a radiator. By the end the gas is a lot cooler and cleaner and is piped through to the engine. The coffee gas, the carbon monoxide and hydrogen, goes in the cylinders and the explosion drives the engine.”

Both these cars would be great for coffee lovers. In the morning they could make their brew to wake themselves up, and then go and use the left-overs to wake their car up!

Labels: automotive engineering, car, coffee, combustion, organic waste-fuelled, Rover SD1, speed record