Slashdot Mirror
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.
Those are some rather extravagant claims for a technology that appears to be about half thought out (what if we put an engine of some kind on an air car!). My gut reaction is that they pulled that MPG number and top speed straight out of their ass.
I read the internet for the articles.
A bit different than the usual 'hybrid' gas/electric design.
I'd like to know how the air tank would be refilled, though. I mean, gas stations already have air compressors for your tires, but would that put out enough pressure to fill the tank in your car?
Or will this strictly be an 'around town' sort of car, and you'd have to rent something for long trips?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I think the only way they'd get past the "burp-car" or "fart-car" stigma would be to start offering them as rental cars - let people drive them around a lot. Then they might have a market. (Unless they just come in at $2500 - then they'll sell a billion of them)
meh
I've already got a car that gets close to that:
- Honda Insight - 80-90 mpg in real world I-95 driving (mine)
Volkswagen is also building a car that will get 240mpg, although it's only a two-seater. It will arrive late 2009 (europe), and hopefully hit the U.S. sometime shortly after.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
OK, so you use an electric engine to drive a compressor which then drives the wheels. Or - even worse - you'll use a gasoline engine to compress the air. It's true that you'll get "zero pollution" while driving, but this vehicle is going to use significantly more energy than a vehicle that uses an electric or gasoline engine to drive the wheels directly. And that means *more* pollution, not less. There is a reason that we don't use compressed air to anything larger than toy cars and rockets - it has an incredibly low energy density compared to a tankful of hydrocarbon-based fuel.
This is yet another "clean energy" idea that preys on the naieve.
Well, we could go nuclear. At any rate, having millions of "clean" cars and a few plants to generate power will let us focus on making the plants as clean as possible. Then if fusion ever happens, we can start building those without changing the cars.
Indirection solves yet another problem!
Say instead we took the same car and replaced the engine with a small 1.2 litre diesel. Now calculating in the cost of the compressed air and comparing it to the cost of diesel to go 1000 miles which is cheaper?
May even debate which is greener considering that the compressed air didn't jump in the tank itself
Why do they have to make the friendly cars so damn ugly?
:)
Maybe because they aren't really giving high priority to the market or feel that the "environmental hippies care more about function than looks". Truth is, the there is a growing market of "environmental hippies" that have both money and sense of style. Maybe its time they took some of their industrial designers off their 10 tonne Enviro Pollution Vehicles and actually applying them to making environmentally friends vehicles which look good.
In short: yup, I agree with you
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Is there a drivable prototype of this thing? Has anyone from Motor Trend or Auto Week ever had a good look at it? For any real car, the prototypes precede volume production by several years.
Accusations of fraud are flying between the Air Car people.. Apparently there are two Air Car groups, and they don't get along.
Tata Motors has nothing on their web site about the "air car". They do have a page of their concept cars, and the Air Car isn't on there. They're coming out with the Tata Nano, at $2500. The Tata Nano is conventionally powered. There's an electric version of the Tata Ace mini-truck, and those should be coming to the US this year. But there is no Air Car or "City Cat" from Tata that I can find.
This looks like vaporware.
I think Spielberg built a huge PR hill to climb for the litigious American market. Ever see Jaws? As Mythbusters showed, in the extremely unlikely event that an air tank ruptured, it would typically expirate rather explode. It would be difficult indeed to make the tank explode, but that's the image I have.
A twist on that by which the energy industry could rake in profit is by declaring it unsafe to use compressed air. Instead only compressed CO2 or Nitrogen should be used, to avoid fire hazard.
O'course, that kind of undermines efficiency for braking, which should best be done by compressing air. Maybe they could use two tanks and use the difference in potential (pressure) between the two in a closed system.
sigs, as if you care.
I don't know what city you're in, but here we have freeways (65-75 mph) and even on the main streets the speed limit is 45mph (so most sane people go 50-55mph).
I had a car which got 85mpg a few years ago - the Citroën AX 1.5D - which, unlike the Honda Insight, could actually take four adults and some shopping (although the two adults in the back had to be fairly small). It probably wasn't quite as safe in a crash as an Insight, but had the advantage that pedestrians and cyclists would hear you coming.
Everybody likes to point out that EV comes at a cost, and always ignore that EV will slowly pick up the energy from AE or nukes, which have very limited emmisions. A decent page is here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If they're heating the air charge to increase the volume/pressure then I suppose that efficiency would increase as ambient air temperatures decreases, but what does this automobile do to provide passenger cabin heat? If the heat extraction from the burned fuel is efficient (and I imagine it must be) then waste heat is unavailable for the cabin.
This is one of the substantial (and as yet to date, unsolved) issues for an all-electric car serving in anywhere other than a tropical climate -- at some point you must provide heat to the cabin. Electrical resistance heat is incredibly inefficient, heat pumps are efficient above about 30 degrees F (though they are nearly worthless below that temperature), and further heat pumps have a very low thermal output (e.g. it would take FOREVER to warm a car on a 30 degree F day).
This car might succeed in Southern California or Florida... maybe texas, but seems impractical for anything other than summer use in the majority of American states. (Even the southwest -- you can die of hypothermia in the desert at night.)
It's a shame, because I'd love to have some more options for transportation other than gasoline engines.
(BTW, I never knew about electrically heated VW Beetle seats and I've been restoring them for years. I suspect that's some aftermarket "solution." The Beetles (and all aircooled VWs & Porsches) capture heat from the outside of the exhaust manifolds.)
You seriously believe that the proven technology in electric vehicles is more hype than this? This article is entirely hype, these guys have nothing to show except for estimates. They are looking for funding. 1. Unlike an electric car, you do not have an expensive, heavy battery that you have to figure out how to recycle when it is dead. You could cut the FUD crap with a knife.
The batteries for the Tesla roadster, an actual production vehicle, unlike this concept. Cost around $9000. And need replacing every 5 years. (This adds a fixed cost of around $0.12 a mile for my average driving, but I don't commute very far) Battery prices will probably drop to 1/4 this by the time they need replaced.
LI batteries must be drained to be disposed of or recycled. But the disposal process is relatively non-toxic. This should not be a major concern. Any retailer who sells batteries will dispose of used ones.
On the other hand, The air car requires a multi-stage compressor that can hit over 4000psi. These are usually gas powered, and incredibly loud. Most compressors are slow, low volume scuba systems. And the only commercial way to purchase air in the high volumes needed is high pressure nitrogen canisters specialty manufacturers. They are incredibly expensive, and dangerous.
In addition to this, they have a speed limit set by thermodynamics. They can only fill as fast as you can dissipate the excess heat. In reality you are going to need to keep this disconnected from your house and use a giant tank so you can continously fill it.
And your neighbors are going to just love the noise. Jet engine loud. 2. The internals of the car are likely much simpler than with an electric car. You have obviously never worked with pneumatic systems. They are complex and incredibly finicky. Throw in the element of danger, and the need to cycle the system repeatedly to find problems and you will not be able to get a regular mechanic to touch these. 3. No exploding batterys / hydrogen. This is just compressed air. If there is a hole in the tank, it leak air. The tank is designed to fail gracefully. LI batteries no longer explode. High energy car size power packs which have been crash rated are already in production for both the Tesla and Volt cars. (in addition to the numerous electric scooters and motorcycle kits)
A 4000psi carbon fiber air tank does NOT fail gracefully.
If a fault ruptures the tank it will tear like paper! The explosion will only begin to regulate when the air around the car flash freezes. The freezing, high pressure air will cause burns across the passengers bodies. And they will never hear again. (lets counter fud with fud
What they fail to mention is that the home compressor they sell will probably only fill the car fractionally compared to the industrial size one for filling stations. The energy goes up as the pressure increases. Realisticly they could probably hit 1500psi quickly on a large volume with standard consumer equipment. Which gives you less than 1/3rd of a full charge.
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
From what I can research, the air tank will power the car, all by itself, for about 200Km. With a gas engine suppliment, this could be drastically extended, upwards of 400Km I would say is a fair (safe) estimate. The cars come with their own internal pump system that can run off household electricity, but it takes upwards of 4 hours to fill the tank, and assuming it operates like any other air compressor, it will be loud. The good news is high pressure canisters could refil your tank in 3 minutes or less. Houses would almost certainly have to be equipped with high pressure home filling stations. they won't take much room, could fill 2-3 cars at once, and given all day to refill. By burying them we could eliminate most of the noise. The heat generated compressing the air could even be used for hot water (or to supplement it) as a side effect.
Creating high pressure air (4000+ PSI) generates heat. Filling a tank with uncompressed air takes time almost as much for safety as for the actual time to compress. Filling stations could bury high volume, high efficiency compressors, divert the heat using geothermal options, and eliminate the bulk of noise. You could fill up in 3-5 minutes by using pre-pressurized air from massive underground tanks, or even massive above-ground tanks in some areas. they'd cost a bit to install, but over 10 years would pay better returns than fossil fuel stations. At home, if you had a smaller version system, you could either make hot water, or put in geothermal capacitors. The benefit to geothermal would mean in some markets you'd never have to shovel your walkway in the winter again (use heat pipes under concrete to both dispurse heat and melt snow, lol)
It's a bit dangerous though... carbon fiber tanks at 4000+ PSI... If one ruptuers, the force released could quite litteraly throw the car a few blocks. More likely, it would simply rupture, causing the car to act like a bomb, just without flames... Vapor expansion at this level could rip people and metal apart. these tanks need to be REALLY strong to be safe, adding significantly to vehicle weight, reducing storage space, and limiting fuel economy. Sure, we can make one that goes 800KM on a fill up and has room for 4 including luggage, but there's no way the motor safety guys are ever going to allow it on the streets...
I'm skeptical. Keep them out of my country until there's 50,000 or more of them driving around. We'll see then how safe they are.
Also, the vehicle itself is pollution free, but making the electricity to compress the air isn't. If we're moving in this direction we'll need a major investment in free energy sources like solar and wind. Also, compressing the air locally at filling stations requires power. a lot of power. We'll need a super conducting grid to make that happen (if we plan to use clean electricity instead of current local poewr plants). Of course, the same is true for electric cars.
High pressure air can be trucked around easy engouh too. We don't have to make air at every filling station. We could have a few small locations around town and drive trucks from key points to filling stations. This may lower the cost and complexity a bit in favor of logistics.
We'll wait and see.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Air powered engines have extremely high (over 90%) efficiency
And compressors have extremely *low* efficiency. Small compressors (like you'd find onboard or in a garage) are 10-15% efficient at best, while huge, massively expensive regenerative industrial compressors can only get up to 60% or so.
The energy to make air into a compressed form can be done with 100% renewable energy.
Same with electric cars. And they don't have the massive compression losses of air cars, and they have, even currently, much higher volumetric energy density.
It's like an electric car, except instead of the electric motors gettign about 70% efficiency
Try ~90%.
Also, the thermal rediation (heat) from compression can be used to create hot water,
Hence the term "regenerative". Unfortunately, Carnot sticks his ugly head into this process.
Also note the energy to compress air is about 5 times less than the energy input to product H2 to power a fuel cell vehicle the same distance.
And you get this silly claim from where?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Or if you have had your drivers license revoked because of drinking and driving...
Hey I am not kidding here. They have ads all over here in Zurich Switzerland that go along the lines,
License revoked? No problem rent speed reduced car here...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
AFAIK the "moose test" is a test of swervability that a ?Swedish motoring magazine did, and only started being called "moose test" after an A-series Mercedes rolled doing it. The crash tests are crash tests. For lots of good reasons, European cars tend to be smaller than US ones. That's pretty certainly one cause of differences in survivability design and testing. If the cars from one continent do badly in the other continent's tests, certainly it shouldn't be called protectionism. Another good reason for driving Japanese.