air powerd Cars anyone

news.bbc.co.uk...

The French and Indians have worked together on a new car that is powered by compressed air and could be on sale by the end of the year.

not a bad idea and really does put reliance on fuel down a notch.
and should be quite good as it would mean less people filling their cars with petrol keeping it down

Great find!

1.5 Euros of air pumped in = 200km distance
topspeed of 110km/t
cheapest model estimated to 3.500 euros

holy crappers.... thats just amazing

It certainly seems to be a clean alternative, and it is ideal for France or any other nation where most electricity is generated by fission or hydro.

But.... the energy required to propel a car is fairly constant, so whether you're using the energy to compress air and then release the energy as the air is decompressed, or you use the energy stored in hydrocarbon fuel, you end up using roughly the same amount of energy.

I'd be interested to see where most of the efficiency of this vehicle derives from, the air driven motor, or the small and light wieght design of the vehicle.

Also, the calculation of the referenced cost of the air (1.5 euro) to fill the tank is unclear to me. Is that the current price of electricity required to compress the volume air needed to fill the vehicles tank?

edit to add:

I like the idea of clean motoring, but I'm certain that the US could not come close to providing the electricity needed to compress enough air equal the energy content of all the motor fuel consumed on an anual basis.

Plus... to expand the power generating capacity to accomodate all these compressors would simply add more emissions in the form of power plant emissions, unless the new plants are nuclear.

In general, this air driven vehicle is a good, forward thinking idea, and I'm certain that hydrocarbon driven personal vehicles will be novelties within 60-70 years, but I think the replacements will be fuel-cell driven or electric, and the electricity will need to be generated by very clean coal plants or nuclear plants.



[edit on 1/4/2008 by darkbluesky]