Drinking and driving, two things that do not work well together, but yet Ford and tequila company Jose Cuervo have announced a partnership which will see them work together to try and figure out how to make greener cars. How will this be done? Apparently this will involve the use of the agave plant, which in case you did not know is one of the ingredients for tequila.This partnership will see Ford use Jose Cuervo’s leftover agave plant fibers to help produce more sustainable bioplastic parts in their cars. Right now both companies are testing out the idea of using the leftovers to create parts such as the wiring harness, HVAC units, and storage bins, which might not seem like a big deal, but considering the number of cars Ford produces, it will eventually add up to quite a lot.
With Jose Cuervo harvesting anywhere between 200-300 tons of agave a day, it seems that there will not be any shortage on their end either. Speaking to TechCrunch, Debbie Mielewski, Ford’s senior technical leader of the company’s sustainability research department, “They’re shredding, mashing and extracting the juice and what’s left over that nobody knows what to do with? The fibers. They sent us some treated fibers and we were able to chop it and compound it into plastic.”
That being said, Ford estimates that there is about 400 pounds of plastic that is used in a typical vehicle, meaning that right now they’ve only scratched the surface of what they can replace, but like we said, it is a pretty good start.
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