Watch: Can a battery made of 1,232 lemons charge an electric car? Two YouTubers gave it a shot
Turns out, even the world’s largest battery can’t do the trick.
How many lemons does it take to charge an electric supercar? When Volkswagen approached YouTuber Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer, to produce enough power to support their new, fully-electric supercar, he immediately took up the challenge and paired up with fellow YouTuber William Osman to experiment with lemons. The two then embarked on a mission to build the world’s largest lemon battery – although its not yet been recognised as such by Guinness World Records – to charge the vehicle.
Rober and Osman did succeed in building a truly large and functional battery made of 1,232 lemons, as you can see in the video above. For those of us who had no idea lemons could be used to generate power, they even explained the science behind it. Unfortunately, the power generated by the lemon battery was so low, the duo only managed to use it to make “the most expensive glass of lemonade you will ever have”. Even after a couple of days of trickle charge, the power generated wasn’t even a match for a single AA battery.
It turns out that it would probably takes hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of lemons to successfully charge an electric supercar and it seems unlikely that anybody will be trying that out anytime soon .
Rober then had to switch to plan B, which comprised of a regenerative zipline powered by children, and ultimately plan C, good old solar power. Don’t worry, though, the lemons did play some role in the entire process.
To sum it up: When life gives you 1,232 lemons, make the world’s largest lemon battery. Use the battery to make lemonade. Ask children to drink the lemonade to power your regenerative zipline and to install solar panels with a self-cleaning system. Then use the solar power to power your electric supercar’s battery. Voila!
To learn more about the lemon battery itself and get a more comprehensive look at the science behind it, you can watch Osman’s video below:
As of now, British materials chemist Professor Saiful Islam still holds the official Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest lemon battery from 2016.