New car news

14 February 2012 - 13:00

The Microscopic Car

By TOM SKOLARIKIS

Scientists from the Netherlands have built a fully functional electric car that is so tiny, you need an electron microscope to watch it do burnouts.

Made from a single molecule, the Molecular Car eats electrons and then, with 10 tiny electric bursts, can travel six billionths of a metre. So no, you can't drive it to the shops.

Using a backbone of carbon atoms along with molecules of sulphur and nitrogen, the Molecular Car has four "wheels", tiny plates which react when in contact with electrons, driving the spindly-looking little car forward.

It's not the first nanocar in the world but, in a leap forward for emerging nanotechnologies, it is the first of its kind able to run on its own power. Past efforts have needed a push from scanning microscopes, or help from heated and lighted surfaces.

So why go to all this trouble? Nanotechnology - the development of microscopic robots and the like - is expected to be the next technology to sweep the world. Imagine curing cancer by injection of nanobots, tiny swimming robots which hunt down cancer cells and destroy them, then harmlessly pass out the body.

As for the Molecular Car, with a name that sounds vaguely as if it were lifted from Star Trek and not a leather seat in sight, much less a cup holder, we're hard pressed to find uses for this, err, vehicle. But all the same, we're proud. We'll find a use for it.

Watch the Molecular Car do 'the worm':