Slashdot Mirror

> Now, I don't know exactly where on that tiny car the tank is, but I'd assume it's under the seat someplace.

In the prototypes, it was apparently under the chassis (look at the third picture). I suppose the separation would prevent the air from entering the passengers' area.

> The volume of that car is what...two cubic meters? What happens when you instantly put 90 cubic meters of air inside it? (Or under it?)

Maybe the car will be lifted up a bit, but remember the tank is supposed to crack and let the air escape, not rupture all at once. As a side note, MDI says the technology employed for their tanks is the same as the one used for natural gas-powered buses (and while I ride one of these everyday, I've still not heard of any injuries caused by a gas tank rupture, though in all honesty those buses have their tank on the roof, so they're less likely to be broken in a crash)

> Gasoline is good in comparison because it doesn't tend to do this when the tank is ruptured.

Well, sure but it *can* take fire, and there have been casualties because of crash-induced blazes. Also, every kind of energy has its dangers : an electric car obviously carries a risk of electrocution, for instance. I think drastic safety regulations should be enough to reduce the risks to nearly nil.

(obligatory disclaimer : the inventor of that air-compressed car is a friend of a friend. Still, I'm not associated with him in any way and in fact have never met him personally. I just think his idea is pretty good)

> Now, I don't know exactly where on that tiny car the tank is, but I'd assume it's under the seat someplace.

In the prototypes, it was apparently under the chassis (look at the third picture). I suppose the separation would prevent the air from entering the passengers' area.

> The volume of that car is what...two cubic meters? What happens when you instantly put 90 cubic meters of air inside it? (Or under it?)

Maybe the car will be lifted up a bit, but remember the tank is supposed to crack and let the air escape, not rupture all at once. As a side note, MDI says the technology employed for their tanks is the same as the one used for natural gas-powered buses (and while I ride one of these everyday, I've still not heard of any injuries caused by a gas tank rupture, though in all honesty those buses have their tank on the roof, so they're less likely to be broken in a crash)

> Gasoline is good in comparison because it doesn't tend to do this when the tank is ruptured.

Well, sure but it *can* take fire, and there have been casualties because of crash-induced blazes. Also, every kind of energy has its dangers : an electric car obviously carries a risk of electrocution, for instance. I think drastic safety regulations should be enough to reduce the risks to nearly nil.

(obligatory disclaimer : the inventor of that air-compressed car is a friend of a friend. Still, I'm not associated with him in any way and in fact have never met him personally. I just think his idea is pretty good)

We've talked about an aircar here before. The Korean model is a hybrid, this one the Aircar just uses the compressed air tank.

One perceived advantage of compressed air over batteries is that it can be refilled a lot faster than a battery bank can be recharged.(yes I saw the exception those new lions mentioned with the one minute recharge, that's pretty recent though). Some others are the tank itself is significantly lighter than batteries, probably much cheaper to make as well and doesn't have a lot of toxicity to it as batteries do. Another would be cycles of filling, I wouldn't expect it to wear out near as fast as batteries would.

All these various designs and techniques have plusses and minuses to them. Sort of like the early computer days with a plethora of hardware and differing OSes, etc. One of my pet ideas for this deal of having a high mileage cleaner car is to have a pure electric for the commuter car part, for extended range on trips just attach a trailer where a small diesel generator is located, turning the car into a "hybrid". That way most of the time you don't need to be hauling around two motors inside the vehicle, which the hybrids do, the electric motor and the fuel burning engine. Most of the time it could be recharged at your house overnight, ready to go back in the morning, and if you combined this with some solar panels at home (whatever alt energy do dad you like), it would eventually get to pretty cheap per mile to drive. You could "store" your juice during the day while you are gone back into the grid in those places that mandate netmetering, or have your own battery bank at home to plug into.

Yeah -- I've been watching this guy for a couple years, and have come to the conclusion that he's a complete con-artist.

If you read the website carefully, you'll note that the specifications he displays here http://www.theaircar.com/models.html for the various models (range, top speed, refuel rates, etc) are all based on theoretical measurements made by guessing how much improvement he can get from changing a number of things in his current design. The current design has been tested for a total of 7.2 km. He gets his 200-300km range by extrapolating based on his guesses. See http://www.theaircar.com/tests.html (scroll down to "Mileage comparison between the taxi in development and the final car") for the true specifications, and note that after the top row, they're all extrapolations. He's basically saying he should get x% increase from this change, and y% from that change, and that means the "improved" engine will get (x+y)% better performance.

His site hasn't changed in at least a year -- meaning those figures haven't been updates with actual test results, and I don't think they ever will be. It's real easy to guess how much improvement various changes may make. It's not so easy to get that improvement out of them.

Next, note that he's selling "licenses" to build factories to produce the car. This is his real goal: Grab some $$ from investors before they find out he has no real product. He's a lot like the guys selling free energy based on concepts that violate the laws of thermodynamics, but will have a working model "real soon now".

Go ahead and watch this guy -- it's entertainment at least, -- but don't give him any of your money until he can back up his specifications with real world tests.

Yeah -- I've been watching this guy for a couple years, and have come to the conclusion that he's a complete con-artist.

If you read the website carefully, you'll note that the specifications he displays here http://www.theaircar.com/models.html for the various models (range, top speed, refuel rates, etc) are all based on theoretical measurements made by guessing how much improvement he can get from changing a number of things in his current design. The current design has been tested for a total of 7.2 km. He gets his 200-300km range by extrapolating based on his guesses. See http://www.theaircar.com/tests.html (scroll down to "Mileage comparison between the taxi in development and the final car") for the true specifications, and note that after the top row, they're all extrapolations. He's basically saying he should get x% increase from this change, and y% from that change, and that means the "improved" engine will get (x+y)% better performance.

His site hasn't changed in at least a year -- meaning those figures haven't been updates with actual test results, and I don't think they ever will be. It's real easy to guess how much improvement various changes may make. It's not so easy to get that improvement out of them.

Next, note that he's selling "licenses" to build factories to produce the car. This is his real goal: Grab some $$ from investors before they find out he has no real product. He's a lot like the guys selling free energy based on concepts that violate the laws of thermodynamics, but will have a working model "real soon now".

Go ahead and watch this guy -- it's entertainment at least, -- but don't give him any of your money until he can back up his specifications with real world tests.

http://www.theaircar.com/ -- among other things, this one has its own on board compressor; making it a pretty good alternative to existing electric vehicles (compare times to recharge an EV vs its range with that of this compressed air vehicle)

It's the MDI Air Cars "The world's cleanest cars", developed by Guy Negre.

It doesn't use any fuel at all, only compressed air, and the features are good:

Weight: 750 kg
Maximum speed: 110 kmh
Mileage: 200 - 300 km
Maximum load: 500 Kg
Recharging time: 4 hours (Mains connector)
Recharging time: 3 minutes (Air station)

Been around for years?

The article was written in december 2004 and states that the cars will be avaliable in early 2005...
That's some calander you've got there. :)

Still, that's some interesting stuff!
http://www.theaircar.com/faq.html

This type of car has been around for a while now just check out http://www.theaircar.com/

It's in the south of France, Nice, near Italy.
And it seems they are a holding from Luxembourg, for tax laws related reasons I guess.
about mdi

One really cool thing (IMHO) about the French/Italian "air car" is the electrical system:
Technical details
Using a radio transmission system, each electrical component receives signals with a microcontroller. Thus only one cable is needed for the whole car. So, instead of wiring each component (headlights, dashboard lights, lights inside the car, etc), one cable connects all electrical parts in the car. The most obvious advantages are the ease of installation and repair and the removal of the approximately 22 kg of wires no longer necessary. Whats more, the entire system becomes an anti-theft alarm as soon as the key is removed from the car.

Do you mean the MDI air car ?

A completely compressed air vehicle has been made before and is a production model called the air car by a company MDI in italy. They have produced models for street use, you can see a video of it here.

We had great news of this kind in Europe exaclty one year ago, but at the end card didn't show up in our roads. News in Italian: http://www.ecotrasporti.it/eolo.html
Site of the company in English: http://www.theaircar.com/Lucerne.html

another (small and under the radar) company also has a working 100% air powered car that can either be refilled by plugging it in, or with a high pressure external compressor that could be found at gas stations:

see

http://www.theaircar.com

Well, I've been keeping my eyes on thse guys for quite a while.

http://www.theaircar.com/index.html

in fact, I even think I got the link... here?

seems to be a better choice, given higher speeds on pure air, and the possibility for a hybrid engine, a low pricetag and yadda yadda.

Check it out, I've signed myself on the wishlist.

The compressed air car, created by Guy Nègre, costs about $2 to fill a tank and goes up to 68mph for 120 miles. It takes around 3 mins to refill. Mexico city have placed an order for 40,000 vehicles to replace their old polluting taxis. Some more, if old, details here about trying to get them into the UK. It's a great idea for a town vehicle.

Phillip.

I don't know about individual off-grid use, but this idea has been used commercially. Here's one link.

There's also a compressed-air car.

Geez,
Go ahead and burn up all the water for fuel...
Then where will we be?

I look forward to the new and improved
http://www.theaircar.com/

Don't forget the Air Car. It is always nice to see improvements in gas powered cars, but one which runs on air is a lot better. For us and for the environment as well.

Well, there's this.

Unfortunately still concept only, prototypes but no production. However, they seem to be getting closer, although their main focus ATM seems to be companies with vehicle fleets, such as courier companies.
I know I want one.

Check out the air car!: 300 miles at highway speeds on compressed air alone. Betcha can't buy one in the US of Bush & Co. Inc.

pre-note:
Yes, I know that moving to cars powered by electricity really only shifts the problem from the pump to the electricity-production facility, but I still think it would be progress.

Does anyone know anything about the Air Car? I read about them nearly a year ago, and haven't heard anything since. Are they dead? Any chance of them making it to mass production?

And while we're on the topic of alternative transportation, I know what happened to the Corbin Sparrow, but does anyone think that there's any chance of the company coming back from the dead? I really thought they had a promising product.

Running cars on compressed air sounds like a good idea to me. The car as a means of transport is such a brilliant concept that it's a crying shame we're wasting it with polluting engines.

Now, I think that most people in general would prefer not to be auto mechanics. They don't want to have to care. Some of us kind of enjoy it (when we're not scraping skin off our knuckles and swearing) and we likely wouldn't be buying a car like that anyway unless we had too much time and money on our hands, and an evil plot hatching. But the people who most readily admit it are women, because they are freed from being expected to know anything about automobiles by a gender stereotype. Unfortunately this applies also to the ones who do know about cars, and those who want to know about cars, in which case it becomes oppression. Nonetheless there is a vocal segment of feminine humanity which strongly disavows any desire to ever have to do anything but put gas in the car, and even that is pretty annoying when you think about it. Frankly I think that we ought to find ways to get used to the idea of shrinking all of our vehicles (there's way too many big trucks around here to drive around in MDI's air car or anything) and moving towards vehicles which aren't based around explosions occurring inside of them, which is wasteful as all hell, but maybe it's just me. Certainly nothing beats gasoline for energy density and ease of use, but the secondary costs are somewhat excessive.

So uh, returning from rant again, if women will admit they don't want to work on cars, and volvo recognizes that they're willing to admit it and is willing to work with them and sell them something they might want, what's wrong with that? I'm sure they'll sell plenty of them to guys, too, who would rather just not deal with it, maybe even some who would know what they were doing if the hood were off. And if they make it modular enough it might make it really convenient to work on the car, which would be a nice side-effect. Just lift the fenders right off and maybe disconnect a cable or two, with extension cables available to and through dealers (and knockoffs available soon enough thereafter) for diagnosis of electrical problems and so forth.

If you think about it the whole auto industry has forever been trying to find ways to go modular, without any real success whatsoever. Chrysler did their little backbone fuel cell concept, which I don't think anyone took too seriously though there was the usual buzz over it. Clearly Chrysler was just larking. Everyone's buzz has been a rehash of something. Ford's GT, for example, which is a beautiful car though one might feel that it somewhat misses the point of the 2100 pound original. This is just a step in that direction. Consumers in general have been pissing and moaning about reliability, which to some extent is well-justified, so here comes a car which is supposed to just do the job for you.

You mean something like this?
They have an entire series of cars designed. You can view them all on the site. They don't seem to be in active production yet. I don't know when that will happen, but if you're really interested, you can sign up for information here.

You mean something like this?
They have an entire series of cars designed. You can view them all on the site. They don't seem to be in active production yet. I don't know when that will happen, but if you're really interested, you can sign up for information here.

This is a rant. If you don't want to read it, don't.

It's been clear to me for some time that when it comes to energy policy, stupidity and fear rule the day. I believe Heinlein once wrote: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity". Can there be a more truthful statement? Consider:

We humans handily ignore the 13 TRILLION pounds of carbon emitted by our chemical-fuel economy, nearly all pumped out of the ground, causing global climatic change. Many people go so far as to argue that this would have no effect on the global ecology!

How can you argue that this much CO2 will not have an effect on our environment?

We pay little more than lip service to all of the apparent results of our decisions to persue chemical energy.

I'm not one to say that we should go back to banging rocks, and eat bark and bugs, but since we all think so highly of our children WHY AREN'T WE THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD THEY WILL LIVE IN?

I cringe every time I see a new make of unsafe, inefficient, ecologically expensive SUV and consider the irony of the owners of such vehicles being among the most likely to have an "I love America" bumper sticker when such vehicles provide only a dependence on foreign oil. Even funnier still is the idea that an SUV is a good car "for the kids"...

And yet, when you mention alternatives, such as this ultra-clean and efficient compressed-air car that cleans the air as it drives, refuels in under 2 minutes, and provides reliable transportation at an equivalent cost of around $0.35 per gallon of gas, it's "nerdy" or "unsafe" or "a hassle".

And, perish the thought that having a clean, safe, self-sufficient micronuclear power plant ! I mean, cheap, safe, non-polluting energy! Oh, "but it's DANGEROUS!" they say. Never mind the annual death toll of just under 1.2 MILLION people from those wonderful cars. If 2 dozen people died in a power plant, it'd be a "national disaster" in the papers, but 1.2 million people dying in cars barely make the obituaries column on page B-11.

How is stupidity not in power?

And one of the primary reasons why the SUV is so popular is because of all the stupid legal benefits that automakers enjoy for making large, cheap, polluting, inefficient, over-priced-but-"stylish" SUVs and light trucks.

If we just applied some sense to the situation, we'd have cars that didn't pollute, we'd have energy that didn't force us to sell the birthrights of our children, all combined with a reasonable economy we could all be proud of.

What kind of world are your grandchildren going to live in?

It is a cool car. Literally! Though the engine runs hot, the exhast, clean air, comes out at -30 to 0C so the tail pipe is cold. They say it takes about $2 of electricity to fill a tank. Since electricity prices vary so much I don't know what to make of that. But they are saying it is cheap. A car costs about $10,000.

Alternative-powered vehicles seem to be crippled..

Not this one.

Dimensions: 3.84m, 1.72m, 1.75m
Weight: 720 kg
Maximum speed: 130 kmh
Autonomy: 200 to 300 km
Recharging: 4 hours (electric)
Recharging: 3 minutes (air station)

OK, just so I don't get accused of recycling material, I left a post the other day with the same subject line...

But the biatch about 'lectric cars is RECHARGING them. Who wants to go 150 miles, only to wait 8 hours to recharge it?

It seems to me that the best alternative energy car is the air car .

It runs on compressed air, and actually cleans the air as you drive it! Range of around 200 miles, and you can refuel in under one minute.

If no external compressor is available, there's an internal one that takes a few hours - so at its worst, it's pretty comparable to an electric car.

To refuel takes about $2 worth of electricity!

If I had the $$, I'd very seriously consider getting one...

The biggest problem with electric cars is recharging them - it takes hours.

Instead, I've seen other solutions that provide similar capabilities as electric cars, but without the recharge headache. The one that I find most promising is the air car.

It's about the size of a Geo Metro, and goes ~200 miles on $2 worth of electricity, and you can refuel in under 1 minute! It also has a small built-in compressor which takes a few hours, which means that at its worst, it's no worse than an electric vehicle.

The best part - they are apparently already being manufactured in France and South Africa. If I had the money I'd definitely want to get one.

No pollution, dirt cheap to operate, and the engine should be more reliable than a gas engine because there's no combustion.

Just in case no one mentioned this yet.There's a car that runs on compressed air. Compressed air sounds like a logical storage medium to me. I would imagine that it takes less energy to compress atmosphere than it does to exctract hydrogen.

Please read the FAQ before you tell me how dumb I am. And I would love to hear any statistics or insight from the slash tards that are in the know on this subject, since I'm too lazy to do the research myself.

Just in case no one mentioned this yet.There's a car that runs on compressed air. Compressed air sounds like a logical storage medium to me. I would imagine that it takes less energy to compress atmosphere than it does to exctract hydrogen.

Please read the FAQ before you tell me how dumb I am. And I would love to hear any statistics or insight from the slash tards that are in the know on this subject, since I'm too lazy to do the research myself.

we will have compressed air powered cars!

oh.. wait! nevermind... its out already

I really can't wait to see the the air car come out!

Now that's going to be exciting. I highly recommend reading the site. Also if I read the FAQ correctly it says that the vehicles will cost between $8000 and $10,000.

An interesting fact is that the air that comes out of the Air Car is cleaner that when it entered the car. Not only is it zero pollution, but it cleans the air!

I think the Air car has a better chance of working, not only due to cost, but the licensing model as well. They will grow through selling the factories, not the cars. Check the website to see how many licenses have been sold.

None in North america, 40 in China alone. http://www.theaircar.com

Why not try this