Berkeley Engineers Have Some Bad News About Air Cars

cheeks5965 writes "We've argued before over compressed air vehicles, a.k.a. air cars. Air cars are an enchanting idea, providing mobility with zero fuel consumption or environmental impacts. The NYTimes' Green Inc. blog reports that the reality is less rosy. New research from UC Berkeley and ICF International puts a period at the end of the discussion, showing that compressed air is a very poor fuel, storing less than 1% of the energy in gasoline; air cars won't get you far, with a range of just 29 miles in typical city driving; and despite appearing green the vehicles are worse for the environment, with twice the carbon footprint as gasoline vehicles, from producing the electricity used to compress the air. Given these barriers, manufacturer claims should definitely be taken with a grain of salt."

Comments

You should use two measures of electric vehicles

[presidenteloco]

The significant fact about electric (or hydrogen fuel cell), or electrically compressed air vehicles
is that electricity (and hence hydrogen via electrolysis, or compressed air tanks) can be generated
in all manner of relatively or completely "green" ways, whereas fossil-fuel transportation is
at least presently restricted to getting its fuel by digging up stored carbon from the Earth at
unsustainable rates.

So electric vehicles (or hydrogen fuel cell, or even relatively inefficient compressed air) vehicles,
are stepping stones on the path to a non-GHG producing future energy system.

So the "green-ness" or carbon footprint of these electrically based technologies should be
measured with two separate baselines:

1. What would their carbon footprint be if all electricity was generated with carbon-neutral generation
methods such as wind/solar/geothermal/hydro/wave/nuclear.

2. What is the carbon footprint assuming the US continues to maintain arguably the most carbon-dirty
electrical generating mix in the world.

Measured in this light, it can be seen that the complete issue is changing the electrical power source for the
US, in parallel with adopting one or multiple forms of transportation technology that is electrically based.
Either change without the other does not work. Both are necessary for effective improvement in emissions
reduction of transportation.

Cold Steam Engine?

[Banichi]

It occurs to me that a compressed air vehicle could be compared to a "cold" steam engine.

Have there been any scientific advances that could make steam engines in general viable for car sized engines?

There are other ways to compress the air.

[jcr]

Compressing air can be done with any source of mechanical energy. Put a windmill on your roof, gear it down, and have it drive the compressor directly.

Come to think of it, having a sizable amount of compressed air storage in one's house would be handy. Great for dusting.

-jcr

Re:Zero Emissions are worse??

[MeatBag PussRocket]

i'm curious as to how much thought you're really given to this, above and beyond the 'mythbusters' level. firstly, you're right, Priora are not built with lithium batteries, though you should wish that they were. Lithium is NOT stripmined, Lithium salts are extracted from the water of mineral springs, brine pools and brine deposits. The metal is produced electrolytically from a mixture of fused lithium and potassium chloride. Nickel on the other hand IS strip-mined and while their disposal may not be all that bad, the production of nickel batteries is extremely harmful to the environment. IIRC there is a mine in Canada used for the production of Prius batteries, if thats the one i'm thinking it is, there is a 60 mile dead zone around it which contains about as much life as the surface of the moon.

there are of course problems with most forms of energy storage, the trick is finding ways to manage those problems.