There is now a car that's made up of biodegradable materials like sugar and flax, and it actually works. Just take a minute to think about how far we've come. 

This lightweight resin vehicle is called Lina, and it can carry about four people and can go up till 50mph. Lina has been invented by a group of students from the TU/Ecomotive team at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands. According to them, this could be the next thing to get environmentally friendly technologies into the automobile industry.

© TU/Ecomotive

The sheets of Dutch-grown flax that cover the car have a similar strength-to-weight ratio to fibreglass and weigh only 310kg. 

"Only the wheels and suspension systems are not yet of bio-based materials," said Yanic van Riel, one of the developers from the team.

© TU/Ecomotive

Even though it works, since it has not passed any crash tests, we won't be seeing it on the roads anytime soon, or maybe ever. Noud van de Gevel, the team leader said that the material ‘will not bend like metal, but just break'. 

The team is now just hoping to test drive Lina towards the end of this year, once they get approval from the Netherlands Vehicle Authority.

© TU/Ecomotive

Invention of new environmentally friendly vehicles is quite essential now as regulators seek to bring down air pollution and mitigate climate change. But, according to researchers, even though these kinds of cars won't use up that much energy to drive, the energy is then spent during the manufacturing process. 

"Energy that is saved while driving the car is now spent during the production phase," Mr van de Gevel said.