'It Works And It's Absurd': College Students Build 'Couch Cart' To Get Around Campus

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - There's all kinds of creative ways to get around a college campus these days. But you might have to look twice to believe what students at Purdue University have invented as their preferred mode of transportation.

Students who live at the Joshua House in West Lafayette, Indiana, have built what they call the "Couch Cart" -- a motorized love-seat placed on a cart they purchased.

"This is Joshua House's Couch Cart. It is a couch that we had lying around, a cart from Menards, and a bunch of go-kart parts we bought online, and we like to drive it around campus," Purdue student Ethan Cox tells CBS affiliate WLFI.

The beauty of the Couch Cart is it's simplicity. First, they attached an electric motor to the underside of a small garden cart. Then they put a board on top with holes for two pegs on the bottom of the love seat to fit in.

"It's nothing serious, it wasn't for a class project or anything, we just thought it would be a fun time," Cox said.

Student Nate Shumaker got the ball rolling last winter when he began buying go-kart parts with Christmas money.

"I just like that I'm driving a couch cart, it's that simple," he tells WLFI's Peter Hulett. "That was the goal when I built it, just to have an electric couch cart."

At 12 miles per hour, the Couch Cart isn't the fastest way across campus. And it has the turn radius closer to a truck. But the smiles it brings to people makes it all worth it.

"Every time I walk past that thing I kind of just chuckle to myself," Cox says. "It's here, and we have it, and it works, and it's absurd. It's a great time."