EV’s are so last season. Those of you into the latest and greatest clean energy technologies need to get yourself a car that runs on compressed air.
The idea of an air powered car has been around for a while but the technology is incredibly difficult to master. Indian car company Tata Motors is developing its Airpod as a next generation, zero pollution vehicle.
The Luxembourgian engine manufacturing company, MDI, has been working on a motor that can run on nothing more than compressed air for over twenty years, and five years ago Tata bought the rights to sell this motor in India. In May the company confirmed that it had successfully completed stage one by testing out the engines in two different vehicles.
The car has space for three passengers, and can travel at 40mph. The tank holds 175 litres of compressed air which can be bought from a specialist station, or taken from the air by activating an on-board electric pump. Tata claim that filling the tank will cost only €1 and then last for about 125 miles.
The bad of Tata Motors is their light weight cars are GLUED together in some areas. Not the greatest safety factors for head on crashes.
Being glued is not necessarily bad. The best plane of WWII was the de Havilland Mosquito, which was glued.
The Mosquito was also made of wood, didn’t have to withstand impacts, and the pilots were expendable in the face of the Blitz. Not a valid comparison
Okay, how about Aston Martins?
http://www.speautomotive.com/SPEA_CD/SPEA2003/pdf/b01.pdf
I stand corrected. However, I would much prefer bolts.
“The Luxembourgian engine manufacturing company, MDI, has been working on a motor that can run on nothing more than compressed air for over twenty years”
Must have one giant air tank on it.
Edison’s dream.
This is a terrible idea due to the energy costs. Using compressed air to do work takes something like 10x the energy. Compression takes a lot of energy. Similar to the H2 car, once in the car it’s very efficient, but how much energy went into making the fuel?
Neither compressed air nor hydrogen are fuels. As you say, it takes considerable energy . . . real fuel . . . to produce these.
I love how 0 pollution vehicles always seem to leave out that the fuel they use was compressed or generated somewhere else. Electric vehicles are powered by coal plants, compression generators use electricity as well, but so long as you are using it at the time of USE then it is green.
Stationary sources do have much better pollution controls than mobile sources, so there is some pollution savings, and if it’s electrical power, then you can use nuclear fission to power your car.
what’s the GLUE issue. they only travel at 40 mph!
And what of all of the energy lost due too heat, PV=NRT and all….