After reading this you may be convinced that Raul Oaida is one of the most brilliant inventors of our time. He is only 21 years old, so his years of inventing are just in their infancy. One of his recent inventions is winning the hearts of people young and old. It is a car made completely out of Legos. This should make the child within you squeal with delight. I mean, come on! You are never too old to appreciate a good Lego project, right? Now I am going to go on to tell you something even better about Raul’s invention. It runs on air. What are you thinking now? Is your mind blown? Because it should be! It is a full size car made completely of Legos that runs on air. That’s right, you can make a car out of toys, and have it run without fuel. Zero emissions. And here is how.
This is Raul working on the project. The LEGO car took almost two years to complete.
The project enlisted the help of 40 donators from a crowdfunding site.
Raul also had the help of Melbourne entrepreneur and marketing man, Steve Sammartino.
They raised $22,000 for the project. The $22,000 that was pledged was definitely put to good use. The car consists of over 500,000 Lego pieces. Have you purchased Legos recently? They’re not exactly cheap.
The most impressive part of this vehicle is the engine. It is built out of Legos, of course.
The engine consists of four separate orbital engines that are each equipped with 64 cylinders and pistons. That is 256 pistons which are driven by a rather mysteriously placed canister of compressed air.
It has a top speed of 20mph.
Raul said, “We have compressed air stored in bottles in the back. The air pushes down the pistons and makes the whole thing go, so instead of burning gasoline, it just releases air.”
“But it’s almost inconsequential what the car is physically. The LEGO car is a physical token of what’s possible in the connected world where we have all of these people connecting together and proving a point. And in our case, the point was that you can build an eco-friendly car out of toy pieces, and we wanted to bring attention to air powered cars because most people have no idea that this stuff is actually out there.”
Raul has a very good point, many do not know about air powered cars. Did you know this was possible?
The project was dubbed the Super Awesome Micro Project.
Looking at the picture of the seats I am realizing they probably aren’t very comfortable.
The car was built in Romania (where Raul was born) and shipped to a secret location in suburban Melbourne.
Watch the video below to see this Lego car in action:
Sammartino and Oaida say that the hot rod is capable of 20-30 mph, but that they drive it slowly as they’re scared of a “giant Lego explosion.” It would make sense, presumably there is a hard limit on how much air pressure the Lego cylinders can withstand. Considering the blocks may be glued together, there could be limitations due to heat dissipation. Those pistons, without any kind of real air or liquid cooling, are probably generating a fairly large amount of heat. I’m betting potholes are the kiss of death for this baby. And speed bumps? Forget about it!