"Why consume forests that have taken centuries to grow and mines that have taken entire geological ages to establish, when we can obtain the equivalent of forests and mineral products from the annual growth of hemp fields?" (Henry Ford).
Could an eco-friendly car ever be designed in the future?
We do not know if the market will open up to choices of this type in the near future, but we know for sure that in 1941, at the Dearborn Days festival in Michigan (USA), Henry Ford , an automobile manufacturer, presented to the entire world the Hemp Body Car , a car made entirely of a plastic material obtained from soy and hemp seeds, and powered by hemp ethanol (the fuel was refined from the seeds of the plant).
The car, being built entirely of hemp plastic, was much lighter than the cars of the time built in metal. At the same time it was very resistant. During the presentation H. Ford himself, to demonstrate to journalists the elasticity and resistance of the frame, repeatedly hit the back of the car with a sledgehammer, which did not suffer any dents.
The prototype of the Hemp Body Car or Ford Cannabis was completed in 1937 after about twelve years of work following the design. Ford's mission was to create a car that came out of the earth and its plant resources trying to minimize the polluting impact.
With the entry of the United States into World War II , domestic and global automobile production dropped dramatically.
The death of Henry Ford in 1947 , the subsequent media campaign against Cannabis, the prohibitionist laws on the cultivation of the hemp plant and the competition with the petrochemical industry, meant that Ford Cannabis was permanently put in a corner.
Now let's close our eyes and imagine what could have been and wasn't.