Crowdfunded Lego Car Powered By Air

December 22, 2013 By IdeaConnection

SAMP-Josh-Rowe-3915-1024x682What’s made of plastic breaks, was funded by the crowd and can reach a top speed of around 20km/h fueled by nothing but air? The answer is an air-powered car built of Lego by Australian entrepreneur, Steve Sammartino and a Romanian technologist, Raul Oaida. The innovative pair met on the internet.

The machine used more than 500,000 pieces of Lego and has four air-powered engines and 256 pistons, also constructed out of Lego.

 

The crowdfunded project started with a tweet asking for funds. It read: “Anyone interested in investing $500 – $1,000 in a project which is awesome and a world first tweet me. Need about 20 participants.”

Initially, 40 people responded with cash donations and the Super Awesome Micro Project as it’s called, got off the ground. The only parts of the car that are not made of Lego are the wheels and some load-bearing elements.

The car took about 18 months to build and needed further cash injections.

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Possibilities and Potential

Co-founder Steve Sammartino told the BBC that one of the things that has pleased him most about the car is that it can open everyone’s eyes to the possibilities of technology. He said:

“It is quite an engineering feat, but the thing that is exciting for me is that it reminds people in the auto industry and in any industry that sometimes we forget the different forms of technology we can employ to do interesting things.”

You can watch a video of the car in action in the video below.


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