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.

Comments

Re:Easy

[electrictroy]

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.

Re:But..

[Sandbags]

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.