Tata Intends To Sell Air-Powered Car In India

Diggester writes "Tata Motors (an Indian car manufacturer) is changing things up with the first car to run on air, the Airpod. The Airpod's technology was originally created in France at Motor Development International but has since been bought by Tata in hopes of bringing it to the Indian consumer car market. With virtually zero emissions and at the cost of about a penny per kilometer, it is definitely one of the most environmentally and economically friendly vehicles in the world. The tank holds about 175 liters of compressed air that can be filled at special stations or by activating the on-board electric motor to suck air in from the outside. Costing about $10,000, this car could beat out most smart cars from the market." If flying cars aren't available, sucking cars seem like a nice stop-gap.

Comments

This story comes up every now and then..

[otuz]

..so when are they going to do it, like, for real?

Re:This story comes up every now and then..

[Trepidity]

They aren't, because the idea doesn't really work, though pneumatic hybrids could have some future in other forms (according to this paper).

Re:This story comes up every now and then..

[NotQuiteReal]

There are "problems"...

Re:This story comes up every now and then..

[Rei]

About the same time flying cars hit the streets

Given that they're *flying* cars, if they're "hitting the streets", I suspect that they'll be taken off the market pretty quickly. ;)

Not the first air powered car!

[WolphFang]

This is not an original concept! SEE: http://www.aircaraccess.com/history.htm Brief quote: For half a century the air-powered locomotive was a serious contender for the top spot in transportation because of its obvious advantages: simplicity, safety, economy, and cleanliness. Air engines were built first during a period of experimental daily use in metropolitan street transit during the 1880s and 1890s, by companies organized by inventors and air car advocates such as General Herman Haupt. In New York City a building-sized 1500 horsepower compressing station was constructed for the use of the transit locomotives that were being tested there on daily routes. Air-powered mining locomotives were manufactured routinely by steam locomotive companies. Until the 1930s and 1940s the air mule had no serious competition from electric or internal combustion engines in mining because the heat and spark made them unsafe in closed-in and gassy places. The term "air engine" disappeared from engineering textbooks between 1931 when William Lawrence Saunders died, and the end of the second world war. Gas engines had been perfected, the power of the oil industry was established, and gas was cheap.

Re:Not the first air powered car!

[icebike]

And air pressure storage is notoriously inefficient. How does it compare to fuel cells though?

And how can it be non-polluting when some external compressor is required to compress all this air?
It seems that India is having troubles keeping the electricity flowing these days, so how do they propose to power the compressor plants?

Is this another exercise in externalizing any environmental impact, and then pronouncing your product "Green" with great fanfare?

Its a lot like electric cars in general, powered by something, just not something we sell. The pollution will be 3 states away. You don't need to worry about it.

There is no way to compress air in the quantity needed other than by using fissile and fossil fuels or wind and solar.
But we don't have enough of those to handle our houses and our factories as it is, especially in India.

NEVER

[sanman2]

Nobody's going to buy that piece of crap. It's a glorified golf cart.
Even India's poor are already turning up their noses to the Tata Nano, preferring to buy established foreign models.

I think the Nano is a great benefit to the poor, especially the upcoming diesel model, because it's designed specifically for 3rd world conditions. It even has better ground clearance because of India's pot-holed roads. The only other thing it needs to come with, is a bumper-sticker calling for ruling thug-ocracy to be thrown out.

Re:NEVER

[Nursie]

India's poor are too busy sleeping on the street or grazing their goat at the side of the freeway to turn their noses up at anything.

Re:NEVER

[Nursie]

Are you trying to tell me what I saw with my own eyes?

I went to India late last year, to multiple cities. I directly observed these things, street sleepers in vast numbers, families living in makeshift shelters at the side of the road, people grazing animals in the central reservations.

These may be cliches, they may even be preconceptions, but they are very true in modern India.

Re:NEVER

[ThatsMyNick]

I believe what GP means is that there is a market for this car. India's middle class alone is larger than most first world countries population.

Re:NEVER

[the eric conspiracy]

The not middle class half of India's population still makes for a lot of street sleepers.

Also with a per capita GDP of about 1,500 USD your definition of middle class is pretty low-end.

Re:NEVER

[HangingChad]

Nobody's going to buy that piece of crap. It's a glorified golf cart.

And you'd be wrong. At 100+ miles to a charge, you could use it anywhere you could use a scooter.

A glorified golf cart would be all a lot of people would need. If it can go 45 mph, you can drive it on city streets.

If they could bump the speed up to 55 and extend the range a bit, it would be a lot more useful, but they'll sell at the functionality they have now.

Re:NEVER

[EdIII]

I would probably buy one, and I live in the US. It would depend on how much it costs to run the pump and get a full tank.

Back in 2000 I was driving a gas guzzling huge SUV. When gas was consistently cheap it was never a real consideration for me. That changed in a hurry with the gas prices. Bought several Priuses since then, and lately I have reorganized my life so that I have to travel dramatically less.

In the last two years I walk to the grocery store. I buy less food (only what I can carry), have lost considerably weight, and eat better.

My work commute is 5-8 minutes. No problems doing that in a little car like that, especially if it is zero emissions, good for the environment, and cheap to operate.

I tend to stick close to home, ride a bike for long distances, and generally have changed my spending habits and how I relax. This kind of car actually fits to my lifestyle, and I don't think I would be the only one. Betting there is a market in the US as well.

Re:NEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop perpetuating that myth. Middle class has nothing to do with USD anywhere that isn't in the US. Here in China you can lead what is basically an upper class lifestyle on less than $10k USD a year because the cost of living in much of China is that low. I don't get paid in USD and I don't buy things in USD so using that as some sort of measuring stick makes no sense.

What's more in the US they've deliberately used inflation to pick the pockets of anybody not rich enough to have a sizable portion of their savings in investments.

Re:NEVER

[fredprado]

Now compare this with the costs of conventional cars, which they currently buy and you will see the poster you are criticizing is right. Truth is, there is a huge market in India for conventional cars, despite the low average income of its citizens, and conventional cars are more expensive than this.

The flaw in your analysis is that you forget India Population is just well above a billion people, so even a relatively small percentage of the population is still a lot of people.

Re:NEVER

[ceoyoyo]

The car (supposedly a "glorified golf cart") costs $10,000 (you can convert all the figures into rupees or euros or swiss francs if you want). If the average person makes $1500 / yr, they're probably not going to be able to afford that car, never mind a conventional one. In the west if you're in the "middle class" you usually make rather more than the price of a cheap car per year.

Re:NEVER

[Rei]

A good point. People often ask me how my salary in Iceland compares to my last salary in the US, and my answer is usually, in short, "it's irrelevant on its own". The long answer is "it's complicated", followed by a long discussion of the different tax rates, the different compensation structures, the different benefits (company, union, and national), the different cost of living in different regards, and on and on. It's very hard to quantify. It's much easier to just say, "I live reasonably well and enjoy life" or soforth.

Re:NEVER

[cold fjord]

Half of India's population is now in the middle class.

It's about time to throw out the old preconceptions about the rising powers of China and India. They simply aren't true any more.

That doesn't appear to be true. Indeed, the trend appears to be in the opposite direction.

India income inequality doubles in 20 years, says OECD

The OECD says India has the highest number of poor in the world.

Some 42% of its 1.21 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day.

Re:NEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I hate to let reality get in the way of an angry rant but 68.7% of India lives on less than $2 / day and the middle class is 4% of the population.

Re:NEVER

[Jafafa Hots]

The nerve of the guy, talking about the market for cars in comments about an article about the market for cars.

Re:NEVER

[fredprado]

In average Indians do have a low income in USD. Still if just 3% of then can afford this car that makes roughly 40 million people. Which is more than the whole population of Canada, for example. I am quite sure that more than 3% of its population can afford this price, especially considering that ontrary to your belief conventional cars already sell more than this there at considerably higher prices than this.

And no, there isn't a huge market for Ferraris anywhere in the world. Ferrari doesn't need a huge market though, it is quite content with its very small market of very rich people.

Re:NEVER

[hajus]

There's a lot of taxi cabs in the cities though, or at least there were 20 years ago when I visited. How do the cab drivers afford the more expensive regular cars if they can't afford the $10k ones?

Re:NEVER

[donscarletti]

Just because a population is in the tens of millions does not make for an appreciable proportion of the total when dealing with China and India.

Beijing (where I live), Shanghai and Shenzhen are rich and up to developed standards. What you would find in the heartland of Henan, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei would be considered to be very poor. What you would find in the mountains of Tibet and Guizhou however would simply shock most westerners. I have not been to India, but it's HDI is far below China's.

Re:NEVER

[Joce640k]

You're keeping the Bible Belt and calling it a "fix"?

Re:NEVER

[eharvill]

Hey, things are getting much better here in Georgia. We can actually buy beer/wine in select locations on a Sunday now. That's progress!

Re:NEVER

[tibit]

To me, inflation is defined by the buying power of my money. As far as I'm concerned, the dollar has lost 50% of its buying power since 1999, averaged across what I personally buy (groceries, gas, household items, furniture, some building materials). That "low" inflation is someone's joke.

Re:NEVER

[realityimpaired]

They are only around ~3000 lbs, which hardly makes them heavy compared to other cars. Expensive? They are on the low end between $20 and $30k.

What kind of real world mileage do you get out of that, if you don't mind my asking?

I drive a 2011 Subaru Impreza... a car that's in no way designed for efficiency (it's designed to drive around corners really fast), and I don't make any effort to try to conserve fuel, and I get about 35-40mpg real world out of it (with a manual transmission). It cost $10,000 less than a similarly-equipped Prius. If, over the lifetime of the Prius, you have not saved $10,000 in gas, then I'm coming out ahead on the cost scale.

And the reason I'm putting this to you is this: you can buy a turbodiesel VW for less than the Impreza cost, and reasonably expect 70mpg out of it in real world driving conditions. And, around here at least, diesel is less expensive than gasoline.

Recycled CNN content

[michaelmalak]

All this is is a blogger recycling a CNN YouTube from 2010 to get some clicks (worked astoundingly well!). And according to Wikipedia, it's been vapor since 2000.

Re:Recycled CNN content

[ArhcAngel]

It's been vapor a lot longer than that...Besides the obvious pun I saw a guy demonstrate a compressed air motor on "That's Incredible" in the 70's. I've tried to find it but it looks like nobody wants to be reminded that show ever existed.

Re:Recycled CNN content

[michaelmalak]

Actually That's Incredible aired in the 80's, not the 70's. And I see that you made the same comment in 2000!

Re:Recycled CNN content

[SeaFox]

Don't you try to tell me anything prick. I remember it being from the 70's and now you're going to call me a liar?

Yes, we are.

Also, LOL to posting as Anonymous Coward but identifying yourself as the original poster: ArhcAngel.

Re:Recycled CNN content

[ArhcAngel]

Yeap, that was me. I consider 1980 part of the 70's. I also consider "Real People" and "That's Incredible" to be the same show despite them being on different networks ;).

of course!

[korgitser]

... everybody loves inflatable tatas!

Re:of course!

[SteveFoerster]

Might they also say, "I hope she's an escort!"

And they're going to compress the air with??

[Dzimas]

The problem is that electricity (or petrol) has to be used to compress the air. And 65% of the electricity in India is generated by burning coal or natural gas. So, yeah, let's burn fossil fuel to run an inefficient air compressor to run an inefficient vehicle. The *only* way that compressed air motors make sense in cars is if you want to reduce local emission levels in a densely populated urban area.

Re:And they're going to compress the air with??

[ClioCJS]

If I pay $3.50 in gas, I get to go 20 miles. About 50 kilometers (VERY roughly, but gas prices fluctuate so much, the cost is close enough).

If this thing is a penny a kilometer, that would be 50 cents.

What's worse: Burning a gallon of gasoline -- which also has to be electrically pumped -- or just the electricity to pump. 50 cents worth of electricity, if that. (Some of that money would be filling station overhead, and not just electricity.)

Or maybe we should just give up progress until someone comes up with free unlimited energy?

Re:And they're going to compress the air with??

[Cimexus]

Uh, 50 km is an extremely poor rough conversion of 20 miles. It's only 1.6 km to the mile remember, whereas you've multiplied by 2.5.

20 miles is ~32 km. Making your journey roughly 32 cents in this car, not 50 cents.

Nothing about the range

[slimjim8094]

It's an interesting idea, but they don't say anything about what that 175 liters gets you in terms of distance or power. The onboard pump is interesting (and necessary IMHO) but India's power infrastructure may not be up for the task of hundreds of thousands of cars all pumping away... if they're targeting cities, or they can get these filling stations everywhere, it might be alright.

The real problem with all these compressed air vehicles is the diabatic nature of compressing air. When you compress it, you generate a huge amount of heat that's hard to use and slows down the filling process (since the pressures are higher than normal, which will be problematic for the service station idea), but when you expand it (for power) you need to re-heat the air or else your efficiency goes way down since super-cold air doesn't have much volume. That's why they immerse SCUBA tanks in water while filling. If they figured out how to minimize that problem (maybe they use it slowly enough that it's not an issue?), they should sell a lot of them. TFA doesn't have anything suggesting that they have, though... so I'm skeptical.

Re:Nothing about the range

[Baron_Yam]

Because the heat is created by the fueling (compression) process, and reabsorbed from the environment during the use (expansion) process, the exact opposite of when you'd want to recover the heat.

On the up side, you get free pollutionless air conditioning every time you hit the 'gas' pedal.

Re:Nothing about the range

[Triv]

the video gives it an 50mph top speed and a 90-125 mile range.

Very strange

[fustakrakich]

Your search - airpod site:tata.com - did not match any documents.

$10,000

[OldSport]

Hindi for "far more money than 95% of the population will see in their lifetime".

Running on fumes!

[ewg]

Neat, a car that can run on fumes--indefinitely!

Even "dirty" electricity can be a win ...

[perpenso]

The problem is that electricity (or petrol) has to be used to compress the air. And 65% of the electricity in India is generated by burning coal or natural gas.

To be fair you need to consider the energy used to refine and deliver the gasoline/diesel, and any emissions in the process.

One nice thing about electricity is that even when "dirty" sources are used for generation the emissions are centralized so that there is more opportunity for capture and sequestration.

A couple of interesting points

[el_flynn]

Some details on the specifications, range etc of the Airpod can be found here, but some of the stats are in French.

Also, Tata originally signed the agreement in 2007. Five year old news?

Lastly, from the MDI website about the Airpod: This latest version of AirPod... [has] a base consisting of a composite sandwich of fiberglass and polyurethane... [and a] a cast aluminium frame. More details from that link.

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[PerlHeadJax]

Bart Simpson: I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows.

Appropriately, from the episode "Screaming Yellow Honkers".

This car is sort of a deathtrap

[FreakerSFX]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airpod

Let's assume that Wikipedia is accurate here...

220kg of Poly-urethane and fiberglass - even with the range they claim (which is good) this vehicle will never be viable outside of 3rd world markets. It's never going to pass a safety test because it's a deathtrap. Still it may find a niche market and I am a fan of non-petroleum concepts.

Sued by Apple

[lophophore]

They are so getting sued by Apple...

They can't call it air* or *pod. Oh no.

"One Billyon Dollars"

Re:Sued by Apple

[bakes]

That's nothing. The real problem they have is with the round corners on the bumpers.

Overestimation...

[bayankaran]

Only about 20% of the Indian population is of anywhere near middle class status.

The situation varies from state to state - in my state Kerala you can conclude 70% is middle class and Kerala population is on a long term decline (like Japan), health and development indexes are comparable to European nations etc.

The situation is the opposite in rural Bihar and other big northern states.

But the 20% officially middle class is a huge number - little less than the population of United States. Still if marketers and consultants conclude they are going to buy plastic crap from China in huge numbers they will be disappointed.

Western corporations regularly make an entry to India. The first mistake they make - overprice their products and Indian competition kills them on a price point. The second mistake they make is in overestimating the consumption patterns and excess inventory gets piled up - example: original Reebok and NIke shoes end up sold on the footpath.

But I have a fascination for the management and MBAs running these organizations. They are so clueless the errors they make are laughably stupid. Compared to them George Bush was a genius.

Aircars are Last Place as Primary Movers

[CodeBuster]

While the use of a pneumatic air system to recover energy from braking for use in subsequent starts does have some merit in a hybrid configuration, the idea of a vehicle powered completely by compressed air has been very thoroughly discredited in the published research papers. Yes, it can be done but it's terribly inefficient; almost no other vehicle is less efficient than compressed air, even battery powered vehicles are better. The wiki article on compressed air cars has a comprehensive list of their rather substantial disadvantages. Really the only situations where air cars are even considered are those where sparks or burning of fuels make both internal combustion and electric too dangerous and where their limited range and power are not substantial disadvantages. As one might imagine, these circumstances occur rarely and only in specialized situations (most notably in underground coal mines). Bottom line: air cars are simply not competitive as general purpose vehicles and basically never will be due to the laws of thermodynamics and ideal gas among others. Those who buy an air car without understanding these things are likely to be very disappointed with their vehicle's performance. I predict many angry Indian air car owners complaining about how they were ripped off and lied to by the green marketeers who said whatever it took to make the sale.

The disadvantages.

[leuk_he]

Wikipedia already has a nice article about compressed air cars:

-It is safe.
-Exhaust from car is zero. Electricity for compressor can be made efficient.

Disadvantage:
-compressed air is a low energy storage compared to other.
-Long storage times, you will need a compressor at home and load it for 4 hours or something like that.
-Needs heat to expand air. Might run very inefficient in cold climate. (on the plus: free airco!)

A hybrid compressed air car might be a very good option however. Notice that a traditional combustion engine is a good compressor. Maybe tata is even creating a hybrid, they licensed the tech (see wikipedia again).