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.