King Charles has been campaigning for more sustainable choices long before it was trendy. From organic farming to climate change, he's been pushing environmental issues for decades, and this extends to the vehicles he drives. Princess Anne might be famous for wearing dresses and coats from the '70s, but The King still drives the 1969 Aston Martin DB6 Volante he received as a 21st birthday gift—and it has a very unusual operational system.
In 2021, The King (then the Prince of Wales) told the BBC, "My old Aston Martin, which I've had for 51 years, runs on—can you believe this — surplus English white wine, and whey from the cheese process." In official terms, it's known as E85 bio-ethanol and is produced from 15 percent unleaded gas and 85 percent leftover wine and cheese whey produced on the Duchy of Cornwall estate.
But a new vehicle in the royal fleet is giving his wine-mobile a run for its money in terms of high-performance sustainability. As reported by Hello!, The King was pictured driving to church in Sandringham, England, on Sunday, June 1 in a new electric BMW. Per the mag, "the glossy state-of-the-art vehicle retails for a whopping £170,000 and is thought to boast a 341-mile range on a single battery."
Charles received his Aston Martin as a 21st birthday gift.
The vehicle was updated to run on excess wine and cheese whey, as the then-Prince Charles revealed in 2021.
He also owns a Lotus electric car reportedly worth $162,000, per the outlet.
But even though electric cars seem to be the future for the monarch, The King isn't abandoning his vintage Aston Martin anytime soon. In 2018, he told the Telegraph about his idea for running the vehicle on cheese whey and white wine.
"The engineers at Aston said, 'Oh, it'll ruin the whole thing,'" he admitted. However, The King remained undeterred. "I said, 'Well, I won't drive it then,' so they got on with it, and now they admit that it runs better and is more powerful on that fuel than it is on petrol."
His blue convertible also has another benefit that no electric car can beat. As he told the Telegraph, "It smells delicious as you're driving along."
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