By Sam Laird From Mashable

If a life-sized Lego car that actually drives and is powered by nothing but air doesn’t sound cool enough, consider this: The project was funded in part through a single tweet.

The car runs on compressed air, is made up of more than 500,000 Legos and can cruise along at some 15 mph. It’s the brainchild of Raul Oaida, a 20-year-old Romanian who previously launched a Lego shuttle into space.

When Steve Sammartino, an entrepreneur based in Melbourne, saw that project, he reached out to Oaida to partner on something bigger. They had seen Lego engines before, but they wanted to take their project, as Sammartino told Mashable in an email, to “the booya level.”

They dubbed their undertaking the #SuperAwesomeMicroProject, and Sammartino started raising money with this tweet in February of 2012:

For potential investors who wanted more info, Sammartino kept his pitch cryptic but couched in fairly epic language. He gave Mashable a demo of his spiel:

In 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis the 3 CEOs of the Detroit car companies hoped on private jets to fly to Washington and beg Congress for money. They did this because they didn’t understand what the future looks like. Come with me and build a full-size car that runs on air, from toy pieces, with strangers on the Internet – and you’ll be part of the future.

Within a couple of weeks, his network of tech inventors and entrepreneurs donated $20,000 to the cause, then Sammartino pitched in to see the project through. He says the entire thing cost “well over $60,000, but I’m too scared to add it up; I wont sleep tonight if I do.”

The final result, however, was worth every penny.

The car runs on compressed air that’s stored in two small tanks. That air is then released into a pneumatic engine made of Legos, which then turns the car’s drive shaft. The entire project took 18 months, with 12 of those concentrated on building the car.

Oaida and Sammartino’s project has gotten plenty of attention since its unveiling this week. A YouTube video (embedded below) of their work has been viewed more than 700,000 times. While Sammartino isn’t sure what’s next for the car — perhaps an auction or public display — he does have some goals for the project’s longterm effects.

“The main thing for the future is the tech community stand up and take notice of Raul Oaida,” Sammartino tells Mashable. “He is the guy who made the tech happen. As we move into the hardware era of the digital revolution, I just hope I’ve helped him get a Lego up. Find funding for his big ideas and seeded him to the world. He wants to explore space and he has the capacity to do anything.”

Booya level achieved.

Homepage image: Josh Rowe, #SuperAwesomeMicroProject

For more on this story and to view the videos go to:
http://mashable.com/2013/12/19/air-powered-lego-car/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher