COMPRESSED AIR IS THE CHEAPEST AUTOMOBILE FUEL SOURCE AT THE MOMENT, PERIOD.
BBC America, 2 min
WHAT?
Designed by a French engineer in the 80’s, the Air Car’s only fuel source is compressed regular air.
100 MILES PER GALLON?
The Air Car gets about 125 miles per fillup in the 3500 Euro (2500 Euro for India), lighter version. Its top speed of 68 mph. But if combined into a petrol and compressed air hybrid (which is the plan), it can give even speedy American energy hogs 100 miles per gallon.
Estimated arrival in India and Europe – summer 2009. American arrival – 2010 (pending industry intervention).
CHEAPEST FUEL SOURCE IN THE WORLD
It will costs 1 Euro per 100 km, about 1/10th the cost of petrol. Use a special charger to recharge in 3 minutes, otherwise in a regular outlet in 4 hours. Thats how long my RAZR cellphone takes.
TATA MOTORS DEAL
Guy Negre is the founder of the company MDI. MDI is open to licensing their Air Car to anyone interested in its technology. He has been trying to get car manufacturers involved for almost a decade now. No one was interested.
Finally, in 2007, Tata Motors (recent purchasers of Jaguar and Land Rover) decided to take the leap. Tata is the first and only major auto manufacturer to license MDI’s technology. The India-based company originally claimed that they would have an Air Car out in 2008. Now, they are saying summer 2009 for India, because they need time to make the technology suitable for the Indian market (i.e. make it cheaper).
ZERO MAINSTREAM US PRESS
UK press has been all over it, with BBC articles and videos.
The major U.S. press outlets have failed to even mention it. Zero New York Times coverage. No LA Times. Only nerdy U.S. Press (Popular Mechanics, MIT Technology Review, etc) wrote about the story.
In June of 2008 Wired wrote a feature-length article about Tata and their $2500 Nano, with no mention of compressed air technology. This is revolutionary technology! Not even a mention?
In a spring 2008 story in TIME about alternative fuels, the only mention of the Air Car I found was in tiny writing, in the bottom right hand corner, on a time-line of alternative fuels. This is preposterous. The CHEAPEST fuel source in the world, which is also nonpolluting, does not merit press? Fucking Reuters.
The people of Bougainville have been using coconut oil in their vehicles for decades. (BBC / Solidary South Pacific)
The biggest advances in environmental technology will come from tiny little islands or independent powers like China, India, and Bougainville. Life is an education when we don’t rely on others.
The AirCar will be our version.
History of Compressed Air Vehicles/// Popular Mechanics Air Car/// MIT Technology Review Article
Update 11.28.08 (after a comment on my “over-enthusiasm”):
Listen, I know this won’t solve all our problems. However, what are the automobile solutions being provided for us? Hydrogen? A joke. Conventional batteries? Our supplies are cadmium and nickel are not enough to supply battery-powered cars for the entire earth.
With compressed air, we can basically create “batteries” without any heavy metals, using recycled/recyclable aluminum/stainless and some rubber and gaskets. It IS much better for the environment than batteries, and for that matter combustion engines. Also, the technology could potentially be used for more than automobiles – they might be able to replace batteries in other applications (for example, backup industrial power).
Yes, currently even if these came out they would be powered mainly by coal in the US. Yes, that would displace pollution from one place to another. But they are 4-6 times more efficient than current combustion engines. So overall pollution would decrease. Heavily populated cities (I live in NYC) would have less air pollution. The technology is scalable, just like renewable energy: essentially, it would be very easy to create solar/wind charging stations for these cars without even dealing with the national grid.
Yes, we HAVE to make our infrastructure more efficient. But to claim that compressed air is something little is definitely not true. It is a piece of the solution, but not the total solution.
AirCars could increase automobile efficiency more than hybrids ever have, and think about how much attention received over the last 5 years. Compressed air, on the other hand, little mainstream press in the US. That was the point of the post. AirCar and Tata, I believe in you.
9 responses so far ↓
michelle // October 10, 2008 at 11:17 am |
I want one
fulvia // November 27, 2008 at 5:42 am |
This is not the cheapest, nor the most efficient. While neat, it’s not going to revolutionize anything unless the energy harnessed to compress the air is from a solar cell or windmill. Anything else and it’s just polluting in a passive way. This sort of enthusiasm is what makes people forget that it takes a lot of coal, nuclear and hydroelectric power to reel in the slack. The energy must come from somewhere, so instead of OMFGing about tiny shit like this, concentrate on making the global infrastructure more efficient and the tech will trickle down into our daily lives.
Harry Balls // November 29, 2008 at 1:51 pm |
How many compressed farts can the tank hold? America could create more jobs by developing a methane enriched soy bean and feed it to unionized auto plant workers who in turn would both assemble the car and produce the fuel through their flatulents. Make America smell better NOW. Fart Fuel Future.
loboy // November 29, 2008 at 2:38 pm |
D,
Huh?
“With the AirCar, we can basically create batteries without any heavy metals, using recycled/recyclable aluminum/stainless and some rubber and gaskets”.
What are you talking about? A battery made out of aluminum, stainless, and rubber gaskets? What is the chemical reaction in this hypothetical battery you propose? I have no idea what you are talking about. Please clarify.
You makeyoudumb.
Here is a solution for less CO2 emissions no one talks about. Less people.
Maybe in 100 years we will bio-engineer a human-plant hybrid so humans absorb the CO2.
The thing that sucks about talking about green tech stuff is that the argument always comes back to this obnoxious super huge “problem” of energy and CO2. In the long run it does not matter, you will be dead. Most will say “What about our children?” First, you probably shouldn’t have had three kids, and second, you will be dead. If you care about your kid’s environmental future that much then give them your body and let them eat it or use it as fuel.
So what if the polar ice caps melt. The Earth is a few degrees warmer and the atmosphere is a little thicker. We lose some animal species, the coasts are more inland, and winter is more tolerable. Do we think that the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus is an environmental problem? It is clearly a human problem, not an environmental one. Humanity is scared of death.
Maybe the dinosaurs will come back and be happy that the earth is warm again.
Devang // November 29, 2008 at 8:38 pm |
Loboy,
Using compressed air canisters basically replaces conventional batteries for many uses – they both store energy.
So when I say we are creating new “batteries” without the use of heavy metals like conventional batteries. I updated the text above to make it more understandable.
“You makeyoudumb?” Thats funny.
Like I’ve said before Mike, you should have an HBO special. I would watch it.
Yes, less people makes more sense that playing around with dumb little gadgets to fulfill our little fancies. I agree with you on that.
Maybe you can invent some kind of death ray that is really really fun to use on yourself, so you can persuade people to kill themselves for a moment of hyperridiculous fun. You’d solve the overpopulation problem (especially the dumb ones), and you’d be rich.
(Note for all readers: this is a joke. and a conversation that has probably happened before in a dark Washington think-tank).
loboy // January 8, 2009 at 11:44 am |
Could you fill out this article a bit with more technical details? What is the PSI the tank is under, the size of the tank, the name of the French engineer, etc. Does the car have an electric drive? If so, what is the operating voltage? Does the car have a battery for electrical subsystems?
Also the “refueling” process could be elaborated on. The embedded video states the car would be “refueled” by an air compressor at a station. This would mean the air compressor at the station is connected to the electrical grid.
One has to calculate the efficiency of the air compressor to truly understand the operational costs of this system.
This is a link to a PDF about air compressor efficiency:
http://www.p2pays.org/ref/32/31312.pdf
Here is a more indepth article discussing the associated costs with operating air compressors:
http://www.mntap.umn.edu/energy/82-CompAir.htm
Quoting the above linked article:
“Compressed air is one of the most expensive uses of energy in a manufacturing plant. About eight horsepower of electricity is used to generate one horsepower of compressed air.”
Just from that one statement I would tend to favor an all electric vehicle.
Imagine one million compressed air cars. Take the tanks from every single one and create one huge compressed air “super tank” and one huge “super compressor” to do the work. Now imagine one million electric cars. Take all these batteries and create one “super battery” and one massive rectified transformer for converting the grid AC to DC for charging the “super battery. Now we have a lumped element circuit model.
Both systems will have heat losses at there energy conversion points. The compressed air system will be noisy yet light, the battery system will be quiet yet heavy. Hmm.
Any physicists around?
Yash Patel // January 13, 2009 at 6:58 am |
I want to buy a maruti alto. but when i know that air car is also available in tne market in next one or two year. so i can not take decision.
JOEDUPONT // May 21, 2009 at 11:18 pm |
using low tech fuels like charcoal
could pre heat the compressed air and radically extend the range of the car.
Devang // May 25, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
Yes GM/University of California and Tata are both testing using gasoline and heating air tanks to get longer ranges.