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Car Powered by Compressed Air
gripperzipper writes "CNN reports that a Korean company created a small car powered by compressed air. ENERGINE created its PHEV, or Pneumatic-Hybrid Electric Vehicle, which uses a two-stroke compressed air engine for start, acceleration, and uphill climbs. The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 km/h (32-40 mi/h). Although major auto manufacturers have invested heavily in gasoline hybrids, it will be interesting to see if a market will open for this type of vehicle." Update: 04/04 17:18 GMT by T : Reader Tapsu spotted the incongruity here, writing "Interesting post, but the speed conversion has gone wrong way: "20-25 km/h
(32-40 mi/h)". ... Thus the correct speed range in miles would be
something like 12-15 mi/h."
But does it take more electricity to compress the air into the tank than it does to just run the car on electric power? Sounds like just another degree of separation from energy we'll be getting from oil, anyway.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
The car swtiches to electric when it reaches 25 km/hr according to the Energine website which is actually more like 15 miles per hour.
First off, like someone said, that the energy it takes to compress the air can be inefficient and still polute the air if the energy to compress came from fossil fuels/coal. Secondly, while it is an "Engineering Marvel" to drive up a hill using compressed air, it's very dangerous. For any of you who have ever worked on high pressure AC systems, any pressure higher than 500psi or so can be deadly if anything at all goes wrong. It's not like a battery, where a little acid can spill if it's broken. Nor is it like gasoline, cars are built to prevent explosions, and the worst case scenario is lots of fire. If you puncture a high pressure tank or lines, you have a disaster on your hands; theres no avoiding it. Besides, the entire problem with a gas induction engine is that they are horribly inefficient anyways unless they are running at their optimal RPM.
I believe they are actually rather more dangerous. Compressed air tanks are inherently prone to explosions when damaged. You get a little hole in your petrol tank, you'll lose your petrol and run a risk of fire if you catch a spark. A hole in a compressed air tank equals instant explosion.
Remember, life isn't like hollywood, not every car crash ends in a massive petrol explosion (or four... how many tanks do they keep in those cars?), but these compressed air tanks sound like shrapnel waiting to be flung.
You forgot the real reason -- that it looks like (after 40 years of speculation), that we may finally be at Peak Oil may have finally happened -- and that we might be in for one of the largest societal changes in the history of man.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The line should read:
The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 mi/h (32-40 km/h).
What are they thinking?
Imagine what could be done with an advanced plastic tank that deforms in a severe vehicle crash or other incident, instead of shredding like a metal one. For an added safety measure, should a puncture occur, an inner membrane flows out of the hole(s)like a balloon. As the membrane's volume increases, so does the potential force of the explosively escaping gas decrease, correct?
Materials keep improving. I doubt the ones I've speculated upon do not already exist. As to weather they're readily available to manufacture at a realistic cost is another question.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
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.
...and it should be known by now
Show me a station offering free air at 300 bar. Wanna see one...
The basic problem with this car is that it will require extra infrastructure. Not terribly expensive, but quite noisy. Compressing air to 300 bar is not a very quiet affair.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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I've seen a 50kg piston moved a fair way with a small portion of a bottle of compressed helium just like you would use to blow up balloons - it was the first stage of a shock tunnel producing mach 15 shock waves for scramjet model testing. You can get a lot of energy out of a tank of compressed gas - you just have to put a lot more in there to start with.
It might be cheaper for them, and cheaper for us initially (the cost of purchasing the car), but in the long run, it's definitely going to cost us more. As someone stated, it's another degree of seperation for the original energy source. Instead of using the electrical energy directly to drive the car, we're using the energy compress gas. Anyone who's taken physics understands that there will be energy loss for every energy conversion due to heat loss, friction, etc.
In other words, we might be paying a couple thousand less that an electric car, but it'll come back to bite us when we need to pay more for electricity to drive the same distance an electric car can. of course, there's not enough statistics out there to show how much more electricity is required to drive a compressed air engine. that would be something interesting i'd like to see.
i would also like to see some other statistics such as the top speed it can reach. how far it can drive before it needs to be recharged. last i heard, electric cars can usually drive about 100 miles before needing a recharge, but that was a few years back and battery technology and engine technology should have advanced.
another good statistic would be how long it takes to recharge. i'd actually like to see Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries applied in this field.
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Well, it only uses compressed air for accelerating and climbing up hills. So it does make sense to use air: short burst of acceleration on air (much power), steady driving on battery (lower power)
Gasoline needs to be aerosolized and a spark introduced to explode. A copressed air tank just needs to be wacked hard enough...
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.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
Forget about the energy benefits/costs. The greatest benefit of this technology is that the vehicle should have zero emissions. This would lead to improved air quality in cities, since the dirty energy generation plants can be moved elsewhere, reducing smog and improving lung health.
True conservatives? Is that like the true christians? Looks like to me appealing to the idealized form while ignoring the reality of what these beliefs have done historically (remember true conservatives also defended segregation,etc) is nothing more than a way to fight cognitive dissonance.
Neocons are children who don't want their toys taken away, and won't clean their room because it isn't fun.
That doesn't describe "neocons", that describes about 99% of the world's population. Which do you think is more effective - appealing to their self-interest, or pissing and whining about how they don't see things your way?
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