What motivates an inventor and entrepreneur to design the world’s fastest ice cream van? Edd China, a British inventor and TV presenter from Surrey, has broken the Guinness World Record by creating an ice-cream that clocked up speeds of 73.921 mph. Although he doesn’t sell ice-cream for a living, he is on a mission to decrease carbon emissions and demonstrate that businesses aren’t negatively impacted by embracing electric vehicle technology.
This is Edd’s seventh Guinness World Record title centred around speedy motorised vehicles, but the project was never about just breaking records. After Edd discovered that ice cream vans were being banned in some London boroughs due to their harmful emissions, he decided to create a special engine conversion kit that can run on electricity rather than diesel. He hopes to roll it out as a business, and in doing so, to future-proof ice cream vans as a key part of the British summer.
The van originally ran on a Mercedes Sprinter diesel engine. After two years of modifications the record was broken at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire with a speed which would have warranted a speeding ticket on a motorway.
What’s next for the inventor? He has his sights set on breaking the record for the fastest motorized shopping trolley currently held at 70.4 mph and to make it street legal.
Other notable records involving automobiles include:
The longest journey by a coffee-powered car
In 2010, a Volkswagon Scirocco was driven 337 km from London to Manchester powered by coffee. The modified car works by heating coffee granules in a charcoal fire, which break down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. ‘Car-puccino’ can reportedly reach 60 mph and achieved 1 mile per 56 espressos. The process works because coffee granules contain a small amount of carbon.
The fastest police car in service
To help them keep up with rich businessmen in their speeding sports cars, police in Dubai decided to invest in one of the most powerful production cars on the planet: a Bugatti Veyron. With a blistering top speed of 253 mph and a US$1.6 million price tag, the Dubai police parked the Veyron alongside a Lamborghini Aventador that they already owned. The Veyron, however, was renowned in 2016 as the second fastest street-legal car in the world, only pipped by the 301 mph Hennessey Venom GT.
Guinness World Records 2021 book has just been released.
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