Henry Ford Patents the Soybean Car
On this day in history, January 13th, 1942, Henry Ford was awarded a patent for a soybean car. It was a plastic-bodied car with a frame still made of tubular steel, but with plastic panels attached. The plastic panels contained a mixture of resin, soybean fiber, wheat, and hemp.
Henry Ford fitted his own car with a soybean trunk. He claimed that the plastic panels made the car safer than traditional steel cars; and that the car could even roll over without being crushed. In demonstrations, he struck with an axe to show the material’s durability (though in truth it is said that the axe was later revealed to have a rubber boot. The truth about this rubber boot has been neither proven nor disproven to a 100% certainty.
Why did this automobile mogul decide to investigate this concept? Theory has it that it is because he grew up on a rural farm in Michigan and Michigan farmers grew soybeans and bought his tractors, so why not merge these two enterprises? He knew about the regenerative properties of soil and the potential of alternative crops such as peanuts and soybeans to produce plastics, paint, fuel, and other products. He understood that the smoke and ash that his cars produced would not be sustainable for a sustainable environment. As a result, he wanted to make his cars more sustainable and consistently tried to improve the new industry, that he himself was the driving force…. Another, perhaps more plausible, reason was due to a shortage of metal at the time due to WW2. Henry hoped his new plastic material might replace the traditional metals used in cars. To say economics was the only reason at play makes me sad but I do not doubt that the sentimentalist in me is drinking the Kool-Aid of that he wanted to make a better place. Much in the same way as other inventors and scientists at that time who saw their inventions take a monstrous turn and are plagued with guilt for all the money they received for creating something that will be the downfall of mankind.
Unfortunately, WW2 forced Henry Ford’s experiment stopped and the car never got past that first prototype. My question I have for all of you, is why in the last 80 years, no one else has tried to pick up this project? Although I admitted I am a sentimentalist, I am also a realist. In 2021, an estimated 4.4 billion bushels of soybeans were produced in the United States, a significant increase of about 200 million bushels compared to the previous year. Of those 4.4 billion bushels, China imported nearly 14.15 billion metric tons of soybeans from the United States. Given these numbers, I assume it doesn’t make economic or political sense for the government or farmers to use soybeans for cars, no matter the environment benefit it may obtain.
https://ussec.org/resources/conversion-table/