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

oooooo science says its true, must be

[Anonymous Coward]

Science, religion, what's the difference, it both requires faith to believe in the world they propose.
How strange that every green technology has some american scientific with research "proving" that trees are dangerous to the environement, that gasoline is green, that coal is clean, that unpolluted water will affect the ocean population that air cars are worst than gasoline cars...

Science will be used by anyone to try an convince you off any bullshit they want, if you forget details, discard information you will come to any conclusion, like this one.

Of course data manipulation NEVER happens in science
like this article point out pretty well

especially not regarding climate change or fuel...

Re:"zero fuel"?

[SharpFang]

Solar panels require more energy to produce than they can provide over their whole lifespan.

What about methods that skip electricity altogether, say use a solar-powered Stirling engine to compress the air or use a wind or water turbine to "wind" your car - running the engine in reverse will "refuel" it.

Re:Burning wood is not zero emission

[MeatBag PussRocket]

by that way of reasoning everything is a net zero emission. in a few billion years your bones will be oil. man does not create or destroy anything, merely he can but chemically alter things. and given a long enough time frame with a large enough spectrum of materials, all chemical reactions can be undone