Slashdot Mirror
The Air Car Nears Completion
torok writes "According to an article on Gizmag, Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has developed a car that runs on compressed air. It costs less than $3 USD to fill a tank on which it can run for 200 to 300km. The car will cost about USD $7,300 and has a top speed of 68mph. About once every 50,000 km you have to change the oil (1 liter of vegetable oil). Initial plans are to produce 3,000 cars per year."
The thing is there isn't just a lot of compressed air lying around. Thanks to thermodynamics, it costs more to compress the air than what we get out of it when we uncompress it. And it's probably oil or coal burning plants that compress the air. So this isn't solving anything. The reason gasoline is so useful is that it's already been made by nature, so we can get energy out without putting very much energy in. So that only leaves compressed air as a useful energy storage device, and I have to suspect that the other alternatives (hydrogen, fuel cells, electric) do better in that department.