Worlds first air powered car!! Zero Emissions by next summer 2013!!!

I like the idea because i want someone to make the parts i need for my idea.

Storing power in batteries is expensive but using tanks to store compressed air for powering a generator would be another way to store energy

Compress the air with a solar power compressor and store it in a number of large high pressure air tanks,
at night you could run a air motor/generator to power your house when the sun was down..

You are using parts Developed for this car in another way without wheels.

And if you also have the air car you could fill the tank on the car from your home system in minutes just by charging from your home tanks and it would be zero emissions because the air would be compressed by solar power.

reply to post by getreadyalready
Like dynamic braking in an electric vehicle, using a compressor to brake is a good way to extend range. But my point of no free lunch is that it takes a lot more energy to climb a hill with a vehicle than can be recovered from slowing it down at the bottom of the next valley. In the video on the blog that I linked to, the French company actually pushes it as a possible perpetual motion machine! That is nothing more than fantasy.

reply to post by ANNED

When compared to hydrocarbon fuels, both compressed air and batteries fall miserably short in their ability to store energy per unit of volume.

That is one of the big reasons that we still have cars powered with gasoline and diesel fuel. They give lots of power... And range without a lot of sacrifice.

reply to post by butcherguy


the energy would come from the initial tank used to drive the vehicle. then the energy of the wheel spinning(momentum)would be used as an auxiliary power source by simple mechanical to electrical to machanical energy transfer devices use to drive the compressors. ofcourse it would not be perpetual but it would extend the range of the vehicle and reducing the need to "refuel"

reply to post by butcherguy


Agreed. There is no free lunch. At absolute best, with futuristic technology, we might eventually get to 75 or 85% efficiency, which means we can save and reuse that much of the initial energy that it takes to get the vehicle moving. We can extend the range and limit the fuel consumption, and it will be especially helpful in stop and go traffic, but it will never approach 100%, and it certainly will never be "over-unity" or "perpetual."

I just traded my Camry Hybrid in for a Jeep. The Hybrid actually got WORSE gas mileage than the non-hybrid we had before! The hybrid had less trunk space, higher insurance premiums, and less acceleration.

In my opinion, if they put that little efficiency gauge in any car, it would improve gas mileage tremendously! Every time I drove the Hybrid, I tried my best to get the "Excellent" rating at the end. I drove entirely differently just because I could watch the needle rise and fall. My parents have a Bonneville SSEI and it is super-charged. You can watch the Super-Charger gauge rise and fall, and anytime it is showing positive pressure, you can almost watch the gas gauge go down! That car can range from 15 mpg to 40 mpg depending on your driving style!

Efficiency is the key, not the fuel source.

reply to post by 1ncegreat

Forgive me, but any device like you just spoke of would have to be a bit more than simple.

Think about pushing a car when it runs out of gas. Now think about pushing it up a very steep hill. The gasoline engine has very little trouble pushing the car up the hill. The air car can go up the hill too.

The air car uses compressed air in that 'initial tank'. The compressed air in the tank did not get there magically. It had to be compressed through work, using energy. The energy may be from electricity from the grid(coal), solar or what have you. It takes a lot of energy to push a car up a hill, it also takes a lot of energy to compress the air to push the car up that hill.

It actually takes more energy to put that compressed air into a tank than the car can get out of the tank of air. That is because when you compress a gas, you create heat. That heat must be dissipated, and when it is, it represents lost energy. When you compress and store a gas, you end up with a net loss of energy!

So this idea of running a compressor with the momentum of the moving car does not work to begin with, when you factor in the heat loss of the compressor, it gets even more silly.

reply to post by butcherguy

That is because when you compress a gas, you create heat. That heat must be dissipated, and when it is, it represents lost energy. When you compress and store a gas, you end up with a net loss of energy!

So now you have solved the issues of climate control!

Have a blend valve, like we already have in our cars. During hot temperatures, circulate the air conditioning around the expanding air in the engine and use the cooling effect of PV=nRT to cool the cabin! When the weather is colder, circulate the air around the compressor to use the heat loss from compressing the air to heat the cabin!

See, the longer this thread runs, the more and more efficient our little car is becoming!

Wow! After reading the comments on this thread I can see why we still have archaic technology in the civilian sector. Try to veer off of the status-quo and your met with outright hostility. The mentality seems to be, "If it doesn't already exist, I don't want it."

I can partially understand the grease monkeys being scared of job security, but the rest of you act like you own oil companies or something. It would be cool if you could take all that negative energy and use it to power a car. You'd probably get 3,000 miles to the gallon.

/end rant.

Good post OP. S and F for reminding us to think outside of the box.

reply to post by butcherguy

I understand the science of "work"to get a desired operation and that ofcourse requires energy. you are missing the point though. what im talking about is an auxilliary energy being taken advantage of just as when the wheels are spinning the potential energy in the spin factor alone if not harnessed by a device such as an alternator would be infact a waste of energy. hence you don't have to pay extra to keep your car battery charged up so you can start it again. Once again i would say you are thinking within the boundries of the box. ofcourse there are devices than can harness the "wasted energy"(heat) transfer it to electrical energy which in turn can be used to supplement the energy required to run the compressors. In fact energy can be looped back and forth. the idea of standing inbetween two mirrors and continue to see your image repeated endlessly as far as you can see is one example of energy loop. all you need is that first "initial energy". sorry to say but there are alot of ways of generating power that would seem free. such as hydro electricity. by building a few dams dedicated to providing power for transportation would seriously change the game. electric vehicles would be plenty

This may or may not have been said yet and if it has, then i apologize for the repeat.

Also let me start by saying that i am a proponent of efficient tech and sacrifices(cost) necessary for clean tech and i am, in fact, currently engaged in prototyping some of this stuff. That being said, i'd like to point out a few errors in some thinking as it relates to cars, energy, and efficiency/emissions.

When discussing energy and its use, one must consider the entire sequence, starting at the actual energy source and going to the final energy sink, taking into account all the conversions (and losses) along the way. So lets do this for each option: there are four that i think are worth considering (many others are fringe and have yet to prove themselves)... and am not including fuelcells here: too expensive.

1. heat engine (any fuel consuming prime mover)
2. pure electric
3. expander (air powered)
4. hybrid (heat engine + electric)



Heat Engine : Directly converts chemical energy into car locomotion. Roughly 30% thermo efficiency(give or take depending on cycle)
Pure Electric : Converts stored electric potential into car locomotion. Roughly 80-90% electric efficiency (losses at battery, motor and controller). But this stored electricity comes from power plants at transmission losses. These plants operate at roughly 30% also (baring modern cogen [turbine + steam] plants). So we start with 30% heat efficiency, take 5% off for transmission losses (not even considering stress to maxed electric grid) and the 30% drops to 28%. Now remove the 20% (ish) losses at vehicle itself and 28% drops to 22%.

This is a significant reduction compared with pure heat engine conversion. That being said, i also appreciate that many more complicated factors can be added to this analysis (heat engine idling being just one) that may change this arithmetic.

Finally, if pure electric is directly solar thermal/electric sourced, the math swings heavily in pure electric's favor, particularly if the source is local (means on the property)

Expander (air powered). This device converts stored gas pressure (usually air) into auto locomotion, and like electric, it does so with out any emissions (at the vehicle). Also, like electricity, the air is an energy media used as an energetic transfer from some primary source and again, like pure electric, this source is a heat engine.
Only this time we add one more step in the transfer: that of first compressing the air. The process is: heat engine, compressor, expander (car 'engine'), motion.... and there are major losses at compression. In fact, roughly 50% of the energy used to compress the gasses are lost to heat. Nobody talks about this: 50% of the energy bound in compressed gasses are in the form of heat. In a heat engine, this heat is useful and used (largely). In an air motor, all this heat is gone (thermally leaked back into the environment) and only the actual pressure is used.
So our 30% becomes 15%. Add the 10% (ish... i'm being generous here: most expanders are roughly 80% efficient) losses at the vehicle and we have a total of 13% ish over all thermodynamic efficiency.

In my opinion,The expander is the worst of the lot.

Hybrid (heat engine + electric). In my opinion, this is the very best choice (barring solar sourced pure electric). We have the benefits of a heat engine prime source (even better if using the Atikinson cycle) added to most of the benefits of pure electric (no idling at stops for one: quite traffic jams!) with one more huge advantage over pure heat engine.
This comes in the form of regenerative braking: the conversion of braking forces into energy or kinetic energy recapture. This is why hybrids get better millage in the city vs. the highway: they recapture (some portion) of their kinetic energy and recharge the battery as a result.
The overall thermodynamic picture changes and we can see a net increase (due to recapture). I have no numbers to give quantitative values to this assertion, but the logic is sound.

Imagine hybrid trucks reconverting the uphill fuel use into downhill energy storage. Given the masses of the vehicles, the energy saving would be huge.

mark my words: ultra-clean heat engines + electric (regenerative) drive trains with on board storage will dominate.

reply to post by galactix




Good post.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by boncho
The auto manufacturer, cancelled this project... The reason being, air cars suck.

I could have told you that 5 years ago.

So why is the OP posting about tech that was killed years ago because it sucks? OP didn't see the dates in the article were 5 years ago or something?

And even if air cars didn't suck, they cause just as much if not more pollution running on coal instead of gasoline, as you suggested.

I'm going to make a 2 cent comment here just cuz I want to.

Even if you pumped it up yourself, first it's a lot more work than you think, and second the amount of food you'd have to eat to generate that many calories would end up polluting the atmosphere with the extra methane you'd produce. So that's not really a viable option, and would still pollute the atmosphere.

The most efficient systems use a series of hydraulic cylinders to produce steady even air pressure for pneumatic powered pistons; usually employed at remote industrial sites, mining operations etc. When the hydraulic pumps are powered by diesel the efficiency ratio (energy to horsepower) is relatively poor. This being relative to lets say a diesel electric locomotive. The whole concept being considered for transportation needs is totally moon bat crazy in my opinion.

Anything using pneumatic powered pistons or turbines in an integrated hybrid system forget when air is compressed it creates heat, aka energy lose, and the friction it causes when it travels aka energy lose. For these reasons alone it's dumb to even consider for transportation needs. Airlines and fittings are heavy compared to electrical delivery systems to be precise. Electrical motors and electrical storage systems are getting lighter and more efficient everyday. Pneumatic technology has plateaued more or less.

Now with all that said there are applications where CNG could run a turbine that runs an air compressor powering a pneumatic system which would be more efficient than running a heavy generator to generate electricity. However nothing pneumatic can beat the weight and efficiency savings regarding the rest of the advantages involved with electric hybrids. Therefore employing pneumatic systems for transportation needs is not practical.

The steam engine lead eventually to conceive fuel cell technology so pneumatic systems being employed for transportation needs may not be a dead end in the long-term.

That Grant guy on MythBusters has some really cool pneumatic systems posted all over the net. Those are the minds that would make any eventual breakthroughs. The rest are simply people who do not understand fully the challenges involved. I guess that would include me.

Originally posted by MoosKept240
I think at 4350 psi that thing is a bomb waiting to explode.

and all glue construction.........

I wouldn't drive it.

edit on 28-2-2012 by MoosKept240 because: (no reason given)

i agree.it is a bomb.

just imagine if terrorists got hold one of these.

it is a ready made bomb.

ll they have to do is spray some petrol on the and light in it and it will go BOOM...it will explode taking a city block with it.

i would ban it as it could EASILY be used by terrorists.


just imagine all that pressure.


and if you had an a accident...everything would explode.
boom boom booooomm.

reply to post by nobodysavedme


FYI Jaws is just a movie.

reply to post by nobodysavedme




There are a million different kinds of pressurized devices all around you at any moment in time. This one is no more or less dangerous than any of the others, and it is not a potential terroristic weapon. In fact, there are probably not any potential terrorists anyway. They could easily spend 30 minutes at the nearest Home Depot and construct a myriad of things to do you harm, but they haven't, and they probably won't.

The explosion potential is not really a risk. The benefits of the car are not all that they are cracked up to be, but the potential danger is not significant either. Benefits insignificant, danger insignificant, car insignificant.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Gasoline is dangerous.


Being dependent on foreign oil because oil and gas is traded on the open market and therefore it can be exported anywhere on the planet no matter how much we produce or efficient in our usages we become, so we have to spend lives on foreign oil wars is most dangerous.

reply to post by Chrisfishenstein
What's more two scientists discovered cold fusion. They were summarily drummed out of the highly coveted American Academy of Science , tarred and feathered and then run out of the country by the oil companies. The countries of France , Italy and Greece are now turning out Free Energy Units for powering your house . You can buy one for $3000 . You can unhook from the Grid and never pay a cent for electricity or heat again. So, the new compressed air car will go across the USA and you won't spend a cent for the electricity used to compress the air. As a Ph.D. in Chemistry, I know what it's like being blacklisted. You never get a job once you do something against the high priests of mainstream science in the U.S. who kowtow to Big Oil. Furthermore, cold fusion leaves no radiation and has turned base metals into gold , platinum, paladium, and silver starting with plain copper metal ( Today's Alchemy). Each household will generate over the years their own Gold and Silver from their Free Energy Unit powering their house. So, wouldn't this devalue the already over-valued price of Gold on the Market today.Everybody will have free energy and free money soon and the big scientists and the big oil companies will be completely forgotten.