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100-MPG Air-Powered Car Headed To US Next Year
An anonymous reader sends us to Popular Mechanics for word on a New York automaker with plans to introduce a US version of the air-powered car, with which India's Tata Motors made a splash last year. Zero Pollution Motors plans a sub-$18,000, 6-passenger vehicle that can hit 96 mph and gets over 100 MPG, using an untried dual engine — the air-powered motor being supplemented by a second (unspecified) engine that would kick in above 35 MPH. The company estimates that "a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gallons of either conventional petrol, ethanol, or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles." The vehicle could be introduced to the market as early as 2009.
How much does a gallon of air cost?
"My gut reaction is that they pulled that MPG number and top speed straight out of their ass."
almost without a doubt they may have exaggerated quite a bit, but the concept seems kinda solid, maybe similar to how a Turbo or SuperCharger works, only rather than increasing the acceleration, the energy goes toward fuel economy.
... then I think I'd be willing to buy one. Although I really don't like the way they look. Still, I could suffer through the faux-Jetson design if it's a genuine 100mpg driving experience.
I do dread the inevitable tech support calls, though.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
and a litre of your best snake oil, sir!
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Small cars that use little fuel are great. And in cities (where most people drive), it doesn't matter if it only gets a few hundred kilometres (did someone say miles? what are they?), as that is more then enough to get you home again.
As for speed, again, if you are driving in a city, there is no need to drive more then ~60 kilometres an hour (~30 miles an hour I think).
(Of course, I still prefer my (push) bike, bikes are a heck of a lot safer then cars, imagine if everyone had a bike instead of a petrol guzzling car. There would be a lot fewer accidents. Of course, sometimes you need to carry more stuff or more people, simple, just ring up your local car sharing co-op!)
I wank in the shower.
Say we halve what they claim for most practical uses (city driving), you still have 400-500 miles per 8 gallons, or 50mpg. Pretty goddamn good for a 6-passenger vehicle.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
We need a paradigm shift in transportation, because it causes so much climate change.
My immediate family is lucky, economically--we live in New York and don't need a car; but that doesn't exempt us from the environmental consequences of the internal combustion engine.
But even environmental consequences aside, the rising cost of oil has put the squeeze on the rest of my family who aren't fortunate enough to live in areas where public transportation is available/reliable/efficient. When you consider the relative share of annual income that they pay for basic transportation versus mine, it's dramatic how high such a fundamental cost of living is in the United States.
So, ask yourself--how competitive can an economy remain when it spends such an out-sized amount on such a basic service? It should be driving the costs of transportation down to the level of a utility and investing the surplus in cutting-edge technologies.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
How heavily compressed is the air in the storage tank, and how rugged will the tank be? Think about the consequences for both cars if this thing gets rear-ended or sideswiped hard enough to rupture the tank...
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
TFA is long on hype, but severely lacking in details. And contradictory, or at least misleading. It refers to the Air Car as "gas free", but later states that is uses a "supplemental energy source" for speeds over 35 mph and that it can take "conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel". Maybe that's not strictly speaking "gas", but until we have a biofuel refueling infrastructure, that means good old pump gas.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions about the pressurized air tanks. How much pressure will the tanks be under? What happens if a tank ruptures? How are the tanks filled? (If you have to fill them between trips, then there will be an energy cost associated with that, probably not an insubstantial one.) How easy are they to service/replace? How much energy is required to manufacture/remediate them?
As with so many other "green" solutions, we may ultimately find that the real energy savings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong -- I applaud anyone working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I just believe we ought to think more critically about what we're buying into.
Large scale power generation such as power plants are significantly more efficient than the small scale of an internal combustion engine. That's the difference. If my car is powered by electricity generated at a power plant, yea there's still pollution but a lot less energy is wasted and hence, less pollution per mile.
1. You just have an expensive heavy onboard compressor that you have to figure out how to recycle when it is dead
2. Probably a wash, a compressor, tank, and airlines are probably as complicated as a battery, motor, and wires.
3. Not everything fails as designed, sitting on a tank of compressed air when it explodes would blow.
4. True
5. Which makes the profitability and motivation of outfitting a gas station diminish. Anybody could store compressed air and either give it away or undercut the market.
I hope it works, I am tired of paying more for my groceries because "Big Farming" has lobbyists that convinced politicians to subsidize the price of corn produced ethanal.
I wish them luck for success but I too am feeling skeptical. Here's why:
>>400-500 miles per 8 gallons, or 50mpg. Pretty goddamn good for a 6-passenger vehicle.
Yeah, but notice they say "six passenger vehicle" and not "vehicle with six passengers." BIG difference.
With very low-hp automobiles, the extra weight of even one passenger can have a tremendous impact upon performance and economy. (I drive a 40hp 1964 VW Beetle so I know from whence I speak). Driven alone, my car actually performs as well as most modern cars. Add a couple passengers and suddenly it's sluggish and MPG falls into the mid-20 range.
>>Say we halve what they claim for most practical uses (city driving), you still have 400-500 miles per 8 gallons, or 50mpg.
Judging from the tone of the press release (they don't seem to believe it) the 95mpg figure doesn't seem likely at all. And if we take half that figure, 50mpg as you suggest, it's still better than most gasoline vehicles, but roughly on par with turbodiesels. But we need to consider this a bit further. Because low-hp vehicles are greatly impacted by laden weight, if we were to take this 6-passenger vehicle and add a couple passengers I think we'd see that 50mpg figure fall further, possibly into the range of traditional gasoline vehicles which puts it well BELOW that of turbodiesels! It takes approx 35 hp to maintain 60mph in a vehicle with average aerodynamic drag. This vehicle has approx 75hp equivalent. That leaves 40hp to accelerate a vehicle with up to 900 lbs (6x150) of passengers plus the weight of the car. Subtract parasitic losses such as alternator (headlights, heating??) or a/c compressor drag (-5 hp) and it's anemic at best. Meaning it will struggle on hills, and passing on the interstate will be difficult.
Disappointing, but it helps us realize just how efficient a fuel-injected, turbo intercooled internal combustion engine is.
In France over 80% of energy is nuclear and electricity is cheap. I know the UK has high renewable energy targets. It is easier to monitor pollution from a small number of coal/oil plants than emissions from millions of vehicles. I don't think it's ever been reducing pollution and cost of transport that has been the problem with electric/air/hydrogen but the initial purchase cost and the limited range. Especially the latter.
The reason the Tesla can out-accelerate a Ferrari is that there is no loss through a variable transmission, all the torque from an electric motor goes directly to the wheels. I'm not sure about the compressed air car. Both compressed air and electric use no fuel whilst stationary, unlike gasoline cars (except hybrids).
Transmission losses: there is a cost associated with distributing tons of gasoline around.
The efficiency of converting the stored energy into motion of the vehicle: for any kind of combustion engine the maximum efficiency is 40%. For hydrogen fuel cell 100%. As for friction: electric/air = less moving parts = more efficiency.
I'm not going to bother debunking the Hindenburg 'exploding hydrogen' myth, that's been done to death on Slashdot.
You have to be short sighted to think it's not going to happen, it's a question of how and how long. As the saying goes, once you know something is possible then all the rest is simply engineering.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
From the wiki article: The gas itself is not flammable, but it delivers more oxygen than atmospheric air by breaking down at elevated temperatures, allowing the engine to burn more fuel and air and resulting in more powerful combustion. Go read it again.
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I live and work in Montana & Alaska, and wonder would there be any efficiency loss at low temperatures? How would these air engines work at -40[c|f]? Also, since they are decompressing air, creating a chilling effect, would this cause additional problems at low ambient temperatures?
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
1. You spend energy to compress air. Air heats up, heats up tank, tank cools back down to ambient temperature. Significant energy lost to waste heat. 2. You make your air-car go. Air decompresses, cools down a lot. Significant losses to efficiency. Problems with icing. 3. Your air car stops after half a mile. Your 6-person vehicle doesn't have enough compressed air tank space with current technology to approach the energy density of standard batteries, let alone hydrocarbon fuels. 4. *PROFIT*!
This is loosely-informed speculation, but I do know that American safety tests are usually crash tests to ensure that the passenger compartment can survive a collision. I don't know much about European tests, except that they do have a "moose test" that involves testing the maximum speed that a vehicle can swerve. So maybe, just as the American tests favor heavily-armored body types, the European tests favor performance and agility. Since Europe has stricter licensing than America, they can more easily presume that drivers are capable of executing these swerves. In America we allow any idiot to drive, so we test for crash survivability. The difference in design between US and European cars probably stems from this.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, just get out the pump from the accessory compartment in the trunk, hook it up, and start pedalling. After 3-4 hours of fat burning cardiovascular workout, you will have enough stored energy to move your car 20 miles down the road to the service station. And as an added bonus, you'll be in fantastic shape!
Try directly pedaling a car 20 miles in 3-4 hours, without the intervening loss of efficiency from energy conversion, and you'll realize how ridiculous your comment is.
These cars will have their air tanks filled to super high pressures. You will never get a usable compact human powered refill pump, let alone fill the car at a rate of 5 miles per hour of effort.
However, if the trunk contained a folding bicycle, you could ride 20 miles in a bit over an hour, and fetch help.
Or you could just call for road service on your cell phone. I can imagine tow trucks being equipped with high-speed air pumps to refill air tanks of stranded vehicles. Those high-speed pumps would be powered by gasoline or diesel, of course!
Sure ya do buddy, sure ya do.
The highest EPA mpg estimate for highway was 68 mpg using its completely bogus pre-2008 methodology. I'd love to know how your car has a more than 30% mpg improvement than a real Honda Insight.
Interesting concept, but human beings just don't produce all that much horsepower. I mean think about it. Could you push your car 20 miles in 3 to 4 hours? Must people would be challenged to walk 20 miles in 4 hours, let alone do it pushing a car. Now, factor in how much energy you lose to heat compressing the air for the tank, and you see where this is going.
Compressed air really isn't an ideal energy storage media. Though it does have the advantage of being freely available and non-toxic.
As for working off a meal, I remember more than one lunch during High School that I paid for doing dishes in the kitchen. Barter systems exist in small scale all over the place. Usually involving goods or services that are more specialized than raw labor.
Neat concept though. . .
Cheers,
Bagheera
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I think you're massively overestimating the amount of energy that humans can generate.
Here's some math:
The recommended daily energy intake for a person is around 2000 food calories. That's around 8 million joules. A Watt is a joule per second, so a humans entire daily food intake is (with perfect efficiency) is almost enough to constantly power a 100 Watt lightbulb.
The smallest engine that has been used in the Smart Fortwo is rated at 37,000 Watts. That means that the output of the engine on a tiny car is equal to the *entire energy usage* of 370 people.
In conclusion, when we accept the fact that humans probably can't use their entire energy supply to power your electricity generating bicycle, your idea is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Sorry.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The energy used at the power plant 1) is far less than individual engines in terms of energy input to output, 2) can be mitigated by reclamation, scrubbing, and other means, 3) can be from 100% free energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc, and hopefully 100% or more of what we're adding to the system will be just that), 4) can be done cheaper, and with less logistical issues, 5) doesn't have seccondary environmental issues from ground seepage, leaks, etc, 6) doesn't require transporting across the country on trucks, 7) you get the idea yet?
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
You forget, though, that the batteries cause much greater environmental damage and recycling issues, plus weigh a LOT more. Air compressors are horrible for efficiency, but they are also capable of running for decades without much upkeep as well as there's no real need to replace them for the life of the car.
Typical home fueling stations for CNG or electric and so on(if you add in the batteries to the equation) add a huge cost up front. A couple of large air tanks, OTOH, aren't much more complex that a typical SCUBA tank.(few hundred dollars of the car's cost, each)
Mythbusters shot propane tanks with handguns in a recent episode and they dented but didn't puncture the tank. That's very strong, indeed. Smash Labs tested Rhino Lining versus an explosion and the thing survived. Put the two together and you can easily vent any escaping gas away from the passengers *if* something actually manages to puncture the tanks that doesn't already kill the passengers outright from the impact.(we're talking hit by a train crash or similar to puncture the tanks)
$4000 in batteries that you pay $5000 for in a Prius add up to a long payback time compared to a less expensive air powered car(or even a typical Corolla or Fit or similar small car)
Most of the cars available today are heavier than the ones available in the late 80s/early 90s. Side impact beams, airbags, etc.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs