Air Car, powered by compressed air, to begin production soon

[Rajiv]

Air Car, powered by compressed air, to begin production soon (http://sparkingtech.com/tech-sci-news/air-car-powered-by-compressed-air-to-begin-production-soon/)

Tata Motors, India’s largest automaker, will soon start production of the world’s first commercial compressed air-powered car. It estimates that 6,000 of these cars will be made by the end of the year.

The Air Car, as it is cleverly named, was developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre, CEO of Moteur Developpement International. It requires no gasoline at all, using compressed air to power its engine’s pistons.

Hold on to your hats, folks! The CityCat model will reach a top speed of 68mph! However, it will have a driving range of 125 miles on a full tank of air and such a trip is estimated to only cost about $2, making it perfect for city driving. If there isn’t a compressor station nearby, you can also plug the Air Car into an outlet and let its built-in compressor fill it up for you in about 4 hours.

Although it is pretty slow, running the Air Car is very cheap and very green. For those that have no business on the freeway, this car will be a perfect replacement for today’s gas guzzlers.

[Mega]

The car is usless because it can't stand up to crash testing.....i hate to think what would be left after a "coming together" with say a mid size SUV?

Its total LA La land stuff, the WEST will try to plam it off on the "Poor" 3RD World..........only to find the £rd World types are no longer that poor!

Mike

[Rajiv]

Popular Mechanics article on this

Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range (http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4251491.html)

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/aircar0208.jpg

And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.

We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in north of 35 mph, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process officials refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.

[sadsack]

While this is more along the lines of hybrid power trains, kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS - aka flywheels) are now permitted in Formula 1 racing.

DISCLAIMER: This is being reported in Motor Trend, so take it with a metric tonne of salt?

http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/112_0803_technologue


This new one is way smaller (11 pounds, 7.9 inches diameter, four inches wide) . . . per ex-Renault (http://www.motortrend.com/used_cars/01/renault/index.html) F1 team engineer and Flybrid managing partner Jon Hilton, around 70 percent of the energy recovered during braking is available for use in acceleration-a big step up from the 35 to 45 percent you get back from an electric KERS. The flywheel and everything controlling it and connecting it to the car weighs just 55 pounds and delivers up to 80 horses for 6.7 seconds (again the max allowed by the regs).

Technical details of the flywheel haven't been fully divulged, but the rim and the containment housing are composite of patented formula and construction. The hub disc is high-strength steel and its shaft runs in mechanical bearings with ceramic balls in steel races. The flywheel spins in a vacuum (thanks to patented shaft seals) because at peak rim speeds of Mach 3.3, air friction would elevate flywheel-rim temperatures to 750 degrees F. As it is, the system requires no cooling, and it has endured crash tests of up to 30 g without exploding.

The enabling technology here is a small toroidal friction-drive CVT developed by Torotrak and built under license by Xtrac. This "variator" connects the flywheel to the output shaft of a standard F1 manual transmission (see motortrend.com for more on how this type of CVT works).

Might a flywheel KERS power your next car? Torotrak has the CVT working at -40 degrees (it's powering Cub Cadet tractors now). Jon Hilton says the system bolts on easily, is robust, and should cost $1000/car in volume production. That seems ambitious, considering the flywheel will still require clean-room assembly, but even at double, it's a bargain next to electric hybrids.

[metalman]

Popular Mechanics article on this

Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range (http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4251491.html)

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/aircar0208.jpg

ah, pop mechanics, that reliable source of things futuristic and oh so practical...

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/f/f1/250px-Flying_car,_cover_of_Popular_Mechanics,_Feb_1951.j pg

http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/12/aptera.png


http://www.theispysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/150-aircar.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/148/382455269_d2c9afa385_o.jpg

http://blog.hemmings.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/lpgscooter_resized.jpg

[metalman]

that said, here's what i imagine...

mega's bike...

http://i29.tinypic.com/e6olep.jpg

his wife's bike...

http://i25.tinypic.com/ncdx1c.jpg

my bike...

http://i32.tinypic.com/op5y4h.jpg

luke's bike :rolleyes:

http://i28.tinypic.com/29fp0cp.jpg

[sadsack]

that said, here's what i imagine...

my bike...

http://i32.tinypic.com/op5y4h.jpg



Wait a minute - it's made of WOOD?!?

Methinks Metalman is experiencing a case of cognitive dissonance . . .



. . . either that or he is exhibiting the most rigorous display of asset allocation . . .

[Rajiv]

Here is a video

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QmqpGZv0YT4&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QmqpGZv0YT4&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

[Jay]

While this is more along the lines of hybrid power trains, kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS - aka flywheels) are now permitted in Formula 1 racing.

DISCLAIMER: This is being reported in Motor Trend, so take it with a metric tonne of salt?

http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/112_0803_technologue
I'm no physicist, but don't flywheels have the nasty habit of exploding? They would need a pretty good containment vehicle. And the angular momentum makes handling difficult without a gyroscope. Not insurmountable, obviously, if they are being used in formula one cars.

[Jay]

Whoops. Duplicate.

[sadsack]

I'm no physicist, but don't flywheels have the nasty habit of exploding? They would need a pretty good containment vehicle. And the angular momentum makes handling difficult without a gyroscope. Not insurmountable, obviously, if they are being used in formula one cars.

Yes, the greatest challenge to reliable KERS is preventing the flywheel from disintegrating. Look to nano-fabrication techniques for a possible solution (e.g., monocrystaline metallics or monofilament polymers).

There are ways around the angular momentum issue, mostly involving opposed flywheels.

Angular momentum issues are a secondary issue; after all, conventional gasoline engines are essentially chemical enrgy -> rotational energy devices. Then again, KERS would deal with much greater stored angular momentum . . .

[Jim Nickerson]

Wait a minute - it's made of WOOD?!?

Methinks Metalman is experiencing a case of cognitive dissonance . . .



. . . either that or he is exhibiting the most rigorous display of asset allocation . . .

I would bet the latter.

[jimmygu3]

luke's bike :rolleyes:

http://i28.tinypic.com/29fp0cp.jpg

I hate web acronyms, so let me just say I'm rolling on the floor laughing my ass off.

Rajiv, thanks for posting. That's cool!

Jimmy

[Lukester]

Yeah well, I think the "waddling-duck ice cream vending machine" bike there looks cool - it's even got fins, and it looks aerodynamic with those three wheels.

[c1ue]

This whole thread makes me think of Hyde from the '70s show: when he gets high, he starts talking about how the government is repressing the adoption of cars powered by water...

[Lukester]

C1ue -

If you've noticed, Rajiv invariably posts threads on topics which invite much serious reflection and strenuous mental calisthenics. Unfortunately some of us do not always rise to the challenge.

I particularly have an incurable weakness for frequent bouts of frivolity. Occasionally the Metalguy seems to lose his composure and descend into the merely frivolous, which is regrettable on his part, as he has a reputation to uphold.

However there is a modest dividend, in that the merely comic is "good for the circulatory system"! Of course we regularly disappoint Rajiv's tutelage, in that some of these threads degenerate into mere foolishness, whereas he intended to broaden our horizons. :D

[Starving Steve]

Air Car, powered by compressed air, to begin production soon (http://sparkingtech.com/tech-sci-news/air-car-powered-by-compressed-air-to-begin-production-soon/)

Let me understand this: Tata Motors says that I can drive 125 miles in cities for one charge of compressed air and that the charge of compressed air will take 4 hours and cost $2.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT! "I'm from Missouri; SHOW ME."

No-one can power a compressor for 4 hours for $2 at current electric rates. And don't forget that compressors break-down, and mechanical parts and labour are expensive. Maybe one could run a compressor for 4 hours each day in rural India, but not here, and not anywhere in the U.S, nor the Western industrial world.

I don't believe anything that comes from the environmentalists to-day: not windmills, not solar, not fog-drip, not fuel cells, not geo-thermal, not compressed air, not ethanol from corn; NONE OF IT. The devil is always in the details, always in the economics.

Pass the pot to me, because I am going to have to be stoned to accept this nonsense.

Here is what I believe: To-day oil is $109 per barrel, and gas will soon cost $4 per gallon. And with gas, this is just the beginning. To-day bus ridership in the U.S. has hit a 50 year high, and this is just the beginning.

Not only this hard reality, to-day food is hyper-inflating in the U.S. because food takes land, labour, water, potash, and energy to grow. Also, food has to be processed and transported, and this takes energy and labour, too.

There have been no atomic power plants built in the U.S. for decades. Virtually no dams have been built. Nor have very many oil wells been drilled; in fact, the oil stripper wells in Texas have been cemented-up and sealed by EPA order in order to protect ground-water supplies.

No oil has been drilled for fifty years or more in California, at least not to my knowledge. There is oil off of the coast of Southern California, but very little drilling has taken place there for decades.

There might be oil off the East Coast of the U.S, but no wells have been drilled. To this day, no-one knows what is off the East Coast, if anything.

Oil shale in the West of the U.S. has not been developed. Nor has coal been converted to synthetic oil. Sad to say, we have heard all the talk about these sources for years, and so far: next to nothing as far as action has occurred.

Remember all the talk about Alaska and its Anwar oil? So far, next to nothing.

The future? I see buses and bicycles. This would be the optimistic scenario. And we would eat rice and beans, IF we are lucky. We would probably have to grow our own food in our backyards or on our apartment roof-tops. But in the optimistic scenario, we would get by; we would survive.

There is a negative scenario for the future: a radical decline in our standard of living, crime, class war, hyper-inflation, starvation, brown-outs, a stock market collapse, war fever, resentment, nationalism, and ultimately a war over oil in the Middle East. This kind of scenario is the downside risk of running-out of energy.

The History Channel ran a programme yesterday about the world running-out of energy in the wake of Hubbert's Peak in oil production. This is what motivated me to write this blog here now.

[lomaxzoltor]

I'm going long beans and rice! :) From a high-level, I totally agree though. There is no magic and physics and economics will be obeyed whether we want to or not. The air powered car has been tried many times and precise production is going to get in the way of building it cheaply and safely. I remember MIT's famous car (circa 1994) which weighed about 400 lbs., had a GIANT air tank at 4.5.kpsi, and achieved 100mpg at speeds up to 40mph with a Briggs & Stratton single cylinder engine. I guess the FHTSA didn't want to clean up the mess when one of these little powder-kegs collided with an SUV. I haven't done the calculations yet, but to hold enough air to go 125 miles in a car that size, you'd have to have tanks all over the place and still see pressures > 10kpsi. Containing that is either expensive (carbon fiber) or heavy (airline quality Al). Not to mention problems with freezing outlet valves, leaking seals, and fracturing tanks. Their website mentions carbon-fiber tanks manufactured by AirBus, but there's no way in hell the amount of air they sort of specify (a couple tanks on the underside of the car) are going to have even 5% of the energy of the same volume of gasoline. Best of luck to them and it sure would be wonderful, but I have a feeling the bike lines there (and eventually here) will keep seeing more use.

[GRG55]

Let me understand this: Tata Motors says that I can drive 125 miles in cities for one charge of compressed air and that the charge of compressed air will take 4 hours and cost $2.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT! "I'm from Missouri; SHOW ME."

No-one can power a compressor for 4 hours for $2 at current electric rates. And don't forget that compressors break-down, and mechanical parts and labour are expensive. Maybe one could run a compressor for 4 hours each day in rural India, but not here, and not anywhere in the U.S, nor the Western industrial world.

I don't believe anything that comes from the environmentalists to-day: not windmills, not solar, not fog-drip, not fuel cells, not geo-thermal, not compressed air, not ethanol from corn; NONE OF IT. The devil is always in the details, always in the economics.

Pass the pot to me, because I am going to have to be stoned to accept this nonsense.

Here is what I believe: To-day oil is $109 per barrel, and gas will soon cost $4 per gallon. And with gas, this is just the beginning. To-day bus ridership in the U.S. has hit a 50 year high, and this is just the beginning.

Not only this hard reality, to-day food is hyper-inflating in the U.S. because food takes land, labour, water, potash, and energy to grow. Also, food has to be processed and transported, and this takes energy and labour, too.

There have been no atomic power plants built in the U.S. for decades. Virtually no dams have been built. Nor have very many oil wells been drilled; in fact, the oil stripper wells in Texas have been cemented-up and sealed by EPA order in order to protect ground-water supplies.

No oil has been drilled for fifty years or more in California, at least not to my knowledge. There is oil off of the coast of Southern California, but very little drilling has taken place there for decades.

There might be oil off the East Coast of the U.S, but no wells have been drilled. To this day, no-one knows what is off the East Coast, if anything.

Oil shale in the West of the U.S. has not been developed. Nor has coal been converted to synthetic oil. Sad to say, we have heard all the talk about these sources for years, and so far: next to nothing as far as action has occurred.

Remember all the talk about Alaska and its Anwar oil? So far, next to nothing.

The future? I see buses and bicycles. This would be the optimistic scenario. And we would eat rice and beans, IF we are lucky. We would probably have to grow our own food in our backyards or on our apartment roof-tops. But in the optimistic scenario, we would get by; we would survive.

There is a negative scenario for the future: a radical decline in our standard of living, crime, class war, hyper-inflation, starvation, brown-outs, a stock market collapse, war fever, resentment, nationalism, and ultimately a war over oil in the Middle East. This kind of scenario is the downside risk of running-out of energy.

The History Channel ran a programme yesterday about the world running-out of energy in the wake of Hubbert's Peak in oil production. This is what motivated me to write this blog here now.

Steve: Be assured the world WILL NOT run out of energy. Like many other things, however, the cost of energy has been rising and will probably continue, if US authorities continue to run inflationary, US$-depreciation policies. The press is fixated on recent, rapid price increases and the "round numbers" ($100 uranium, $100 oil, $10 natural gas, $4.00 petrol, etc), and love to sensationalize trend-based apocalyptic theories - particularly effective at boosting audiences at times of national economic uncertainty, increasing pessimism and public insecurity.

The fact is the very long term trend of the cost of every major form of energy has been upward for decades. We long ago exploited the easiest to find oil and gas, the cheapest to mine uranium, the largest and easiest rivers to dam for hydro-electricity, and the shallowest thermal coal deposits closest to the major cities. Nobody should be surprised this is the logic that humans, in capitalist or socialist economies, applied to securing the resources they needed. That doesn't mean we are running out of energy.

In every instance, whether petroleum, uranium, coal or hydro, the total amount of energy that remains in the lower-quality, higher-cost, technically difficult, more remote sources of each of these is greater - much greater in aggregate - than all that mankind has developed and used to date. And there-in lies the problem; the problem that neither the hard-core peak oil crowd (like Kunstler), nor the cartel-conspiracy theorists ("it must be all OPEC's fault') understand: To increase energy supply from any source, including solar, wind, etcetera, requires devoting proportionately more resources (per unit of new energy made available to consumers) than it used to. Those resources have to taken away from something else in the economy. If you spend more of your money on gasoline, you have to spend less on something else (or increase your income)...the same applies to national economies and, maybe the world as a whole, IMO.

Those that say increased energy and food costs are a "tax" on consumers are both right and wrong. In one respect, these are no more a tax on consumers than skyrocketing home prices were a tax on consumers (that did not already own homes) in 2003-2005. The consumer still spends, however the allocation of that expenditure is altered. However, I suppose the same arguments for excluding food and energy from core inflation can be applied, in that short-term price volatility leads to "tax-like" consequences for consumers.

The good news is that allocating less to energy means, among other things, finding ways to use it more efficiently. I don't know whether that means expanded public transit, compressed-air cars, border-to-border windmills across the mid-west, electric trains, or who-knows-what-else. Like you, I have little patience with un-informed environmentalists (fortunately there are some who are very well informed) and overpromotion of conceptual solutions by companies, politicians and the media. However, that is where some of the seeds for practical solutions will be sown.

I realise that being in California you are in the eye of the economic hurricane, and now personally feel the effects of this unholy Wall St/Washington engineered financial crisis. But if the past is anything to rely on, California will be at the forefront of generating energy related ideas, developing real solutions, and commercializing them. I've spent quite a bit of time in California over the years, and I still do not understand why, but your state is a phenomenal source of innovation in practically every part of the economy, even measured against the incomparable performance of the USA as a whole.

The Bladerunner-esque future you described is unlikely, but the valley always looks darkest just as one is about to descend into it. The USA will work its way out of the current mess, and once again prosper. Reports of its demise are premature. And along the bumpy journey, if that means a few years of dining on McBean Burgers with rice, well hey, maybe it'll help our obesity & heart disease problems. ;)

[jk]

the hard fact to get our heads around is that a higher allocation of resources for necessities means a lower allocation for non-necessities. the issue is whether incomes, REAL incomes, can rise fast enough so that this does not imply lower standards of living. i'm not optimistic, at least for the short-intermediate run. iirc polls show that americans no longer believe that their children will have materially better lives than they do currently. stepping back and looking at the global picture, appears to show that stagnation or perhaps a little loss of living standards in the u.s. is being traded for higher standards for billions elsewhere in the world. simultaneously value is being dematerialized - a handful of sand becomes the guts of a computer and most of the value added is intellectual property. i think that's the race: the transition from agriculture to industry required moving people off the farm to the factories in the cities, at the same time that efficiencies in farming allowed a much lower input of labor into food production. the transition from industry to information [or whatever you want to call this next economy] requires displacement from industry, but happily allows for a lower input of materials [including energy] relative to value.

[GRG55]

the hard fact to get our heads around is that a higher allocation of resources for necessities means a lower allocation for non-necessities. the issue is whether incomes, REAL incomes, can rise fast enough so that this does not imply lower standards of living. i'm not optimistic, at least for the short-intermediate run. iirc polls show that americans no longer believe that their children will have materially better lives than they do currently. stepping back and looking at the global picture, appears to show that stagnation or perhaps a little loss of living standards in the u.s. is being traded for higher standards for billions elsewhere in the world. simultaneously value is being dematerialized - a handful of sand becomes the guts of a computer and most of the value added is intellectual property. i think that's the race: the transition from agriculture to industry required moving people off the farm to the factories in the cities, at the same time that efficiencies in farming allowed a much lower input of labor into food production. the transition from industry to information [or whatever you want to call this next economy] requires displacement from industry, but happily allows for a lower input of materials [including energy] relative to value.


If materially better means in a "Material Girl" sort of way, then there may be considerable validity to those polls. Pretty difficult to imagine how the children of McMansion-building, Hummer-driving, granitised-kitchen & 72-inch flat screen home-theatre Boomers are going to top their parents...

Even harder to imagine why they would want to...