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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.
What happens when we run out of air!??!??
which is totally what she said
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
We steal it from Druidia. Better get working on Mega-Maid.
Ape 1: SPACEBALLS?!
... there goes the planet ...
Ape 2: Oh shit
In considering the environmental impact of a particular vehicle, there are a number of factors to consider:
There are probably more factors, some very difficult to isolate. And there are safety factors - gasoline is flammable, but easy to detect if it starts to leak. Hydrogen, on the other hand, you would not notice at all until your car decided to emulate the Hindenberg.
Zero pollution is a good goal, but unless all of the factors are considered, it's just marketing hype.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
It depends on where you're at.
I was over at Spaceball City the other day and a gallon of Schweppe's Air was $4! Spaceballs: The Air was even more expensive at $5. They had some cheap off brand air for $2.50 but you never know what you get with the generic stuff.
On Mars, there's just an outright tax on air that everyone pays. It's like 15% of your income but there are expemtions for midgets and girls with 3 hooters.
This gives a new meaning to the word "vaporware" :P
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
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.
I saw this on the television and thought it looked pretty cool, pun kind of intended.
Arguably one could compress one's own air in the garage with a wind or solar powered compressor and fuel the thing for "free." Certainly that would be an option for some (in windier areas) people and even filling stations. Otherwise, of course, we're just moving the pollution from the streets to the power plants that then have to power all of the compressors.
The thing that kicked the idea for me is that the car seems potentially impractical for those of us that live in temperate regions. For a large part of the year, our vehicles need to generate heat for the passenger compartment. In your typical gas-powered motorized vehicle, this is heat taken from the cooling system. Sure, the old VW Beetle had an electric heater in it, but anybody who had one in sub-zero climates can tell you that they don't always cut it. It's probably the case that the improvements in seat-based heating and technology in general will make the heaters more useful. Perhaps the size of the cabin will help. It also needs to be considered that the light-weight construction of the body may not allow for an awful lot of insulation.
Along the same lines, those tiny wheels wouldn't make it through the snow. A 75HP motor seems like enough to power some larger wheels, but what's the torque like, and how much impact is that larger drive-train gonna have? And once you start adding that bottom weight, how much is that going to force changes in the rest of the car, and will it spiral out of control such that the power plant is no longer sufficient?
In warmer areas, like I'd like to move to, it seems a very practical commuter vehicle. I have to imagine someone has thought of routing the exhaust through a cooling system, allowing the engine to cool the cabin without needing an environmentally unfriendly air conditioner. On good paved roads the tiny wheels might only be a hindrance to top speeds, where larger wheels might be needed for rougher roads, like those with cracks and potholes. (Yeah, I may have a thing against tiny wheels...)
There is also a safety factor. In places where everyone drives small cars, this will fit right in, but in the US, too many SUVs and large sedans compete for the same road as these. It'll probably be the same as with motorcycles; they're safer when you get a bunch of them together than individually ripping through traffic. Once there's a lot of them on the road, this should shift so that the small cars will dominate, and the larger ones will be the exceptions.
Heck, someone should suggest to "reverse" the HOV lanes and force the big vehicles over there, allowing the smaller vehicles to have the other lanes; which could probably be narrowed, and would be less congested as all of the vehicles would be shorter and everyone would be closer to their destination by the time the traffic jam started .
End the FUD
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.
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Compressed air is a terrible way to store energy. There's about 250 times less energy in compressed air than in gasoline. Do the math. It's impossible to make a useable car that is powered solely by compressed air. The energy just isn't there.
It's possible, however, to make a working hybrid gasoline-compressed air vehicle. But as far as the hybrid component goes, batteries are a much better candidate.
The car in TFA is based on the MDI AirCar, which is a greener version of the Moller Skycar. In other words, a scam. Whenever the company needs money, they write a few press releases, and some naive investor falls for it.
The company has allegedly dozens of licensing deals all over the planet. But not a single production vehicle has been built. It was supposed to be coming out "real soon now" 10 years ago. In 10 more years, it will still be "right around the corner".
Electric vehicles can be about 75% efficient including regenerative breaking. Presumably the drive train will be used for some slowing here recharging the air tank. Compressing air always produces substaintal waste heat so the base efficiency will be less than for a battery-motor combination. Let's say that they do well and get 50% efficiency on compressing/decompressing. In that case, if we expect about 0.2 kWh/mile for an electric vehicle, we might get 0.3 kWh/mile for this vehicle. That is about 3.3 cents/mile (11 cents/kWh). For a 30 mpg car at $3.00/gal we get a fuel cost of 10 cents/mile. So, the cost could be about a third of the cost of gas.