Social Media powered car 1 Favorite 

It took 17 high schoolers, eight mentors from Kansas City and a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia to create the first ever social media powered car.

The concept was to bring MINDDRIVE to life with tweets, posts, shares and likes which were monitored by an Arduino device. This open-source, single-board microcontroller triggered the vehicle’s motor based on the number of tweets and posts about the project.

The organisation spent a long time trying to convert social media into the wattage needed to make the vehicle work; for example, a follow on Twitter equaled five watts, and a like on Facebook equaled one watt. Signing an online petition was worth 10 watts, and any shares, retweets or mentions on Twitter was another three.

Without a doubt, creating such an adventure was a difficult and very time consuming task, but the idea of combining students’ love of social media with auto shop and renewable energy made this project drive the interaction MINDDRIVE wanted to achieve.

The success was visible long before the car set off as 225,000 watts, three times what MINDDRIVE expected, was generated through tweets, hashtags on Instagram, views on Youtube, and likes on Facebook.

With enough power, the social car completed a 1,000+ mile journey from Kansas City, Mo., to Washington, D.C. But most importantly, this project created awareness through social media and gave young people the chance to gain skills by allowing them to build this electric vehicle.