Air-Car Ready For Mass Production - Yes It Runs On Compressed Air!

Its been covered before here...

inventor claims car running on air

here....

The new engine is here and it runs on air!

and here....

The Air Car - why doesn't everyone have one?

Old news I'm afraid...I'm actually signed up for one when he gets a European licence...

Originally posted by neformore
Its been covered before here...

inventor claims car running on air

here....

The new engine is here and it runs on air!

and here....

The Air Car - why doesn't everyone have one?

Old news I'm afraid...I'm actually signed up for one when he gets a European licence...

Thank you, Wet Blanket Committee. We will take it under advisement.

I think that this has real possibilities. The problem is where do you locate the charging stations?

If you could have one at your home, you could make it solar powered. That way the sun would charge up your car.

I like the concept.

Originally posted by lombozo

Can someone riddle me this?

My other half bought one of those stupid flashlights and they are not worth the powder it would take to blow them to you know where.

As for using that method to power one of these engines, surely you jest in just a few miles max your arms would be so tired they probably would fall off or perhaps you might have a heart attack fron exertion.

Originally posted by shots

Originally posted by lombozo

Can someone riddle me this?

My other half bought one of those stupid flashlights and they are not worth the powder it would take to blow them to you know where.

As for using that method to power one of these engines, surely you jest in just a few miles max your arms would be so tired they probably would fall off or perhaps you might have a heart attack fron exertion.

Shots, you don't get it. It wouldn't be your arms. You'd kick it like those pedal power tractors or cars you had when you were a kid...you know, you'd pump your feet like mad and scoot like a rocket down the street.

Piece of cake.

Originally posted by newtron25
[Shots, you don't get it. It wouldn't be your arms. You'd kick it like those pedal power tractors or cars you had when you were a kid...you know, you'd pump your feet like mad and scoot like a rocket down the street.

Oh I got it alright I simply used the arms since the flash light is operated by arms not feet.

Even if one uses their feet that still will not change the fact that eventually the legs arms whatever you use is going to need rest. Hardly a piece of cake s you put it knowing it will only run as long as the human body can handle the stress/exercise.

You may or may not recall this but last year or it could have been the year before someone came up with a similar idea (this suggestion) to power video games and that flopped big time because it required to much energy to keep the games going. Sure it was tried for a while but once the novelty wore off it was done.

Originally posted by shots

Originally posted by newtron25
[Shots, you don't get it. It wouldn't be your arms. You'd kick it like those pedal power tractors or cars you had when you were a kid...you know, you'd pump your feet like mad and scoot like a rocket down the street.

Oh I got it alright I simply used the arms since the flash light is operated by arms not feet.

Even if one uses their feet that still will not change the fact that eventually the legs arms whatever you use is going to need rest. Hardly a piece of cake s you put it knowing it will only run as long as the human body can handle the stress/exercise.

You may or may not recall this but last year or it could have been the year before someone came up with a similar idea (this suggestion) to power video games and that flopped big time because it required to much energy to keep the games going. Sure it was tried for a while but once the novelty wore off it was done.

check my prior posts. I was being a bit sarcastic.

From what I've seen they go out of their way not to discuss much about the fact that compressing air takes energy, energy which is likely coming straight from your local coal-burning power plant. Furthermore, you’re taking electrical energy and converting it to mechanical energy to compress the air, which is then stored and converted back into mechanical energy again in the car’s engine to drive the wheels. Every time you transfer energy from one type to another, you lose some.

So, the compressed air is just being used as a storage medium for energy. A lot of their claims seem a bit far fetched. I would prefer full disclosure as to the benefits and actual costs associated with the air car. Efficiency, impact on the environment from generator to compressor to operation, etc...

It would seem this idea shouldn't be new by any means and IMO there could be some skeletons in this closet.

Although if it is the real deal then more power to them.

Clean cheap fuel great! BUT a bloody TATA! I have the misfortune of owning a TATA Indica and it is possibly the finest example of poor engineering I have ever come across..I'm going to put this one in the Let's Discredit Cheap Fuel box

Don't get to exited about it. It was supposed to come out in 2002/2003 if I remember correctly. It was supposed to travel at 100 MPH for a maximum of 200 KM.
I am still waiting for one after so many years...

The French vehicle from the Video should be out in 2008. Personally i think the Aussie with a quiet rotary has the better engine, but he lacks the investment support to put it into a serious car chasis.

What planet are Toyota, Mazda Ford, GM etc living on ?

They should be beating a path to this guy's door to develop it into a real car.

As for how much energy is required for a charge, the real issue is that they can free us from stored hydrocarbons and CO2 emissions.

Only a few decades ago, service stations actually had oil bars charged by compressed air. Every service station needed to have a compressor in those days. It is no impractical and the compressor can easily be electrically powered. In my country electric power comes mostly from green forms of energy. Now oil for the motorist is sold by pre-packaged bottles so service stations only have compressors to offer free air for motorist's tyres.

Someone asked about hydrogen. Well that is explosive too. It also requires energy to split water to make hydrogen, so that one has to draw energy twice for hydrogen powered cars. Hydrogen is good but compressed air could be much better.

I really liked the Aussi'es engine. Put one of those on each rear wheel and you've got yourself one strong vehicle.

I don't understand why we don't have cars with this already? Oh wait, I forgot the guy's in charge of the oil (prices) are the one's calling the shots.

Personally, I think the air-powered car is a neat idea, but I can see a few down-sides to it.

One is its crash-worthiness. I'm not worried about the air tanks, I'm looking at the vehicle as a whole. It looks very lightly built. That's not a 'deal breaker', as I'm sure a bigger engineering budget would come up with a solution.

Second, as someone above me pointed out, we're taking chemical energy, converting it to mechanical energy, converting that to electrical energy (coal fired generating plant), converting that to mechanical energy and storing that (air compressor), then converting the stored energy back to mechanical energy (engine). That's a lot of conversion, and while you might evade the IRS, you don't evade the laws of Thermodynamics. Again, this is not a 'deal breaker', but it isn't terribly efficient.

As for why the big car companies aren't jumping all over this, I'm not sure it's a conspiracy, so much as a combination of a catch-22 and a fear of risk. The catch-22 is the same one faced by any alternative energy vehicle...the auto makers don't want to build a vehicle that can't be refuelled easily...and nobody wants to create 'filling stations' to fuel cars that haven't been built yet. The fear of risk comes from the huge investments needed to bring a new technology online, as it were...the new plant to fabricate the engines, training new mechanics to work on the new technology, getting your new technology through the government's safety and environmental hoops....it's not a case of just running out and saying "LET THERE BE AIR CAR!" ala Genesis. Believe me, I wish it was that simple, because in spite of my problems with the air-car as it is, I really like the idea

No one ever said this was free energy or anything. So of course we are using elctricity-->to compress air-->compress air to mechanical work.

The original electricity or work need to compress the air in the first place can be generated in any number of ways, I dont know where the 'coal energy plant' idea came up. So if the companys claims are correct and my calcs are correct then the MPG is estimated to be around 200 MPG based on the prototype.

It is not free energy. The gas we use in our cars is not free fuel either. The cost is takes to 'produce that fuel' from the ground, refine it, etc etc translates to some cost, and ultimately we see this cost as $3.50/gallon in the US (some more some less).

Originally posted by lombozo
OK, I have a question. Does anybody here have one of those flashlight/radios that don't need batteries.

I have both the radio and the flashlight.

It's really cool technology. It has a little generator in it. You crank the handle for a couple minutes and it charges itself up for a couple of hours usage.

"A couple of minutes" and "a couple of hours" are VERY (very!) optomistic estimates. I can get them going for hours, but only by frequent cranking.

Why couldn't this same type of technology be used for something like this, just on a larger scale. Then it would be completely green.
Can someone riddle me this?

We already have this. This is how electricity is generated in the first place. Instead of using steam to push the generator (conventional plants) or water to push it (hydroelectric), youi're using human muscles.

So, when you pull up to a gas station to get fuel. Insteed of spending $50 on a tank of gas, go go over to the compresed air and put some quarters in... sounds good to me.

What are the costs going to be for these things?

You raised some questins that I had.

Originally posted by jbondo
From what I've seen they go out of their way not to discuss much about the fact that compressing air takes energy, energy which is likely coming straight from your local coal-burning power plant.

Or hydroelectric (I don't know about fuel sources in India)... but in either case, yes, that was the first thing that struck me.

Furthermore, you’re taking electrical energy and converting it to mechanical energy to compress the air, which is then stored and converted back into mechanical energy again in the car’s engine to drive the wheels. Every time you transfer energy from one type to another, you lose some.

I think in this case, you lose quite a bit. You generate a lot of heat in compressing the air, which indicates a lot of energy lost in the transfer.

The other thing that occurred to me that isn't addressed is how much power is generated by the compressed air. I am a faithful viewer of "Mythbusters" and recall a couple of episodes where they did things with compressed air tanks. There's a lot of energy in there... but the amount of "oomph" in one cylinder of air couldn't push a boat at any speed for more than a minute or so. Those were standard commercial compressed air tanks (another time they tested divers' tanks).

Did anyone see this addressed (did I just miss it?)

[edit on 31-5-2007 by Byrd]

You know this technology sounds great and all, but I've been thinking about it. Could this be bogus? Until we see one working and producing we just have to 'think' about it. It just seems hard to imagine 2 bottles of compressed air being able to do that much work, 200 km of work.

Yes the bottles are large, I'd estimate 3-4 times the size of a standard scuba tank, and the pressure is slightly higher than scuba pressures, about 4000 psi.

In scuba sometimes you need to discharge a tank of all of its air, to inspect it etc...Well if you've ever done it, you get to gauge how much air is in there under pressure. Its about as much air as in a telephone booth. So think 3-4 telephone booths of air times 2, can that amount of air do that much work in a driving an automobile engine? It just seems off to me.

[edit on 31-5-2007 by greatlakes]

I don't think the Mythbusters ran a piston engine off compressed air.

Isn't that what the Air car does?

Wouldn't this be an ideal effort for micro-credit programs in India? Maybe, people could buy compressors and make a little money filling cars, like people do with mobile phones in remote area's there.

What it means in terms of refueling is that service stations will have a compressor working all day filling a bank of large gas bottles forming a reserviour. When you come in to "gas up" ....

....you will not need to wait all day whilst the compressor hammers away. You plug in the nozzle and turn a valve. It hisses for a few minutes et voila.

The service station takes it's cost from charging you for the cost of running it's compressor and the volume of air used.

The cost of installing the equipment need hardly be more than the investment of buying pumps or installing underground tanks.

Yeah I agree... Where do coal power stations come into this ?

It all depends upon where a country sources it's power grid. I was trying to illustrate with hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles though they are great too, the splitting of hydrogen from water consumes power before it even reaches the vehicle.

I like the air thing and especially the Aussie rotary engine.