Reminiscent of Thor Heyerdahl’s papyrus reed boat that sailed 4,300 miles from South America, makers of the new Toyota 1/X being showcased at the Melbourne Motor Show this week are also thinking of a lightweight floating material – seaweed!

“The 1/X concept is a vehicle that completely redefines what it means to be environmentally considerate. The name says it all: a car that weighs a fraction of the others in its class today and uses a fraction of the fuel” – David Buttner, senior executive director of sales and marketing.

They’re thinking past 2020, but one day cars like the 1/X may be made of plant-based plastic, eco plastics.

The hybrid Toyota 1/X
The future’s seaweed car?
Credit: Wired

At first, it just sounds like another petroleum-based by-product, but when they add that ‘eco’ prefix to it, we can only hope it will bring on a whole new meaning to ‘hybrid’. Since seaweed is a resilient plant like kudzu and has strength like kevlar in some cases, they may just be on to something!

From the Shem Creek blog.

Making cars from seaweed

Fortunately, this is South Carolina, not some of the locations listed below.

• 1/3 of the total weight of all life in Monterey Bay is from gelatinous animals.
• 3 minutes after a person is stung by a deadly box jellyfish, s/he may be dead.
• 8 years after fast-reproducing comb jellies invaded in the Black Sea, they dominated it.
• 20 to 40 people are killed annually from box jellyfish stings in the Philippines alone.
• 100 foot-long tentacles may dangle from the Lion’s Mane Jelly.
• 400 vast Dead Zones in world oceans are too polluted for almost all life except jellyfish.
• 1,000+ fist-sized comb jellies filled each cubic meter of water in Black Sea jelly blooms.
• 45,000 eggs may be released daily by a single jellyfish.
• 500,000 people are stung by jellyfish in the Chesapeake Bay annually.
• 500 million refrigerator-sized jellyfish float into the Sea of Japan daily during blooms.

According to the NSF, in some places, the water is so polluted that jellyfish are the only marine life able to survive. It’s ability to adapt and overcome adversity is just like another South Carolina favorite: kudzu.

Hopefully AgroGas will have better luck with this pesky creature, who like jellyfish, seem to repopulate like a bunch of guppies.

And speaking of jellyfish, check out this giant sucker! That thing would freak me out if I saw it in the water!

From the Shem Creek blog.

Jellyfish are taking over