Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Muscle Cars

Muscle Car
This morning in his blog, Dilbert creator Scott Adams hypothesized about how the efficiency of the human body could translate to alternative automotive propulsion. His theory is that a human body can "eat a pork chop and run 26 miles," which far surpasses the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Other creatures such as ants exhibit even better efficiency. Further, scientists have been able to create working muscles from cells grown in a lab. Putting all of this together, could muscles be grown and used in some form of power-generation system for cars?

Mr. Adams' hypotheses are typically well outside the box and this is no exception, however it does provide an interesting alternative to consider (along with some great mental imagery). Is there a place in automotive technology for "living" components like muscle motors, plant-based upholstery, photo-luminescent marker lights, etc?

1 comment:

Kevin said...

I always thought some kind of lichen-like living paint would be great, so scratches and chips could heal themselves.

Of course there's also that whole horse-draw carriage thing...