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Universities Get $6 Million to Build 'Green' BioCars
March 8, 2007
Imagine every car in Ontario having a “green” interior, with the dashboard, seats, headrests, door panels and other parts made from composites of agricultural crops like corn and wheat. The concept is a step closer to reality today with the announcement that the provincial government is investing nearly $6 million in the BioCar Initiative, a multi-university project led by the University of Guelph.
It involves 16 scientists at Guelph and the universities of Toronto, Waterloo and Windsor. They are combining their research strengths and efforts to improve the development and delivery capacity of biomaterials for the automotive industry.
“The BioCar initiative aligns some of the most distinctive innovation capacity in Ontario,” said Alan Wildeman, vice-president (research). “It involves a consortium of universities working with two of the largest industries in Ontario, the automotive industry and the agricultural industry. This combination provides an unprecedented opportunity for the province to be seen as a major contributor to the global biobased industrial revolution that is occurring.”
Support for the project will come from the Ontario Research Fund's Research Excellence Program. Guelph’s role will include creating new industrial crops that can be turned into composite materials used to make interior automobile components.
“It’s a whole new way of looking at agriculture and a whole new relationship between the sector and Ontario’s economy,” said plant agriculture professor Larry Erickson, one of the lead researchers. “It opens the door for a lot more approaches and utilization of crops. Now, agriculture is more than meat and potatoes; it’s car parts, building materials, fuel and more.”
