[gg3]

The technology was ready 5 years ago. This I know because I did a writeup on this about 4 - 5 years ago. Interestingly, the illustration of that little blue car hasn't changed since then.

They had test runs as taxis in Mexico City. There was talk about scaling up to the entire Mexico City taxi fleet. The taxi version that you see in the illustrations was developed for that application.

Another interesting advantage: the compressor plant filters the air going in, thus as the car drives, it emits air that's cleaner than the ambient air. This was part of the rationale in Mexico City: the taxis would be a net pollution sink rather than a source.

Major advantage is the use of any available power source to compress the air. Can also take advantage of direct compression via wind power, where the air pressure reservoir at the "filling station" levels-out the intermittency of wind. Thus you can use wind power far above the limits that would occur when you put it on the grid.

At the time I did the write-up I didn't pay much attention to the fact that the system provides its own "cold" for air conditioning. Though, in light of the difficulties of getting AC in electric vehicles while maintaining a tolerable range, this is a considerable advantage for the compressed air car. (Anyone who thinks cars don't need AC has never driven in a place where the temps get into three figures...)

As for the eeeevils of personal motor vehicles, sure, let's go back to horses, and hire an army of sweepers to clean up the enormous quantities of urine and manure they leave behind.

At the turn of the 20th century, in NYC and Chicago the accumulations got to be a foot to 18" deep in most parts of the cities. The high leather boots of the era were not a fashion statement, they were a necessity for slogging through the steaming stinking shit.

By about the 1920s - 1930s in parts of Europe (Paris was famous for this), mechanical "sweeper-washers" would go out in eschelon formations of three to five units, to clean this stuff off the entire width of the street in one pass. There was too much to collect onboard the vehicles, so they would sweep it into windrows at the side of the streeets, much like snowbanks after a snow plow, and then guys with shovels and brooms would push it down into the sewers.

And you wonder why France is also famous for its perfumes? Those were not a fashion statement either, they were a necessity to deal with life in an era where indoor plumbing was rare and horse shit was piled high.

Nice, huh? Would you care for a shingle with that?

[onequestionwonder]

Still have your writeup?

[Eli]

Well the thing is going to be built out of fiber glass and glue. You could easily put a very small ICE engine in a similar "car" and get well over 100miles per gallon.

[IslandCrow]

T'is a wonderful new design...
But check out the article from the BBC with a date in 2000:
Oops not so new after all. We had it 7 years ago and...

The Car that runs on air

[clueless]

The piston engine is powered by the release of compressed air which is stored in tanks, very similar to scuba diving tanks, attached to the underside of the car.

The body of the vehicle weighs only 700kg, and the engine itself is a mere 35kg.

What happens when it crashes ?

[jbeckton]

I'd say you have to be a dumbass with no energy literacy to fall for this.

Dr. Foolioso, tell all us lowly doomers what it takes to compress the air?

Energy!

But energy is not the true problem, never has been. Its the energy sources and energy waste that is the problem. Oil will only be a viable resource for the next few dacades, its a finite resource. Electricity will always be around, it is not a finite resource. It is only limited by our ability to harnass it which is too FF dependent but need not be. If we can develop a technology that relies on electricity, not FF, we have a good chance.

[jbeckton]

The piston engine is powered by the release of compressed air which is stored in tanks, very similar to scuba diving tanks, attached to the underside of the car.

The body of the vehicle weighs only 700kg, and the engine itself is a mere 35kg.

What happens when it crashes ?

I'm guessing you die.

Thanks for traveling with Air America.

[nocar]

As for the eeeevils of personal motor vehicles, sure, let's go back to horses, and hire an army of sweepers to clean up the enormous quantities of urine and manure they leave behind.

At the turn of the 20th century, in NYC and Chicago the accumulations got to be a foot to 18" deep in most parts of the cities. The high leather boots of the era were not a fashion statement, they were a necessity for slogging through the steaming stinking shit.

Car-lovers love to bring up the problems of horses. The answer is not horses, the answer is bicycles and rail.

nocar

[Colorado-Valley]

You don't know how many years I've been waiting around for these guys to try to make their air cars work.

It's always just "on the verge of production."

Everybody got all excited and wrote articles about these things five or six years ago, but then nothing ever happened.

Back when I was a cornucopian, the air car was going to change the world.

[clueless]

Electricity will always be around, it is not a finite resource. It is only limited by our ability to harnass it which is too FF dependent but need not be. If we can develop a technology that relies on electricity, not FF, we have a good chance.

Electricity is only the energy carrier, the work still needs to be done to transmit via electricity. When electricity is transmitted through power lines it is only carrying the work being done by the Steam or Gas turbine, which is powered by boiling water or expanding gasses.

I work for one of the largest PG companies in the world and short of the gas combustion turbine, Boiling water is the only way we have figured out how to produce "work" that can be transmitted through a power line. There are NO new fixes on the horizon, I know this becasue I am involved with hiring engineers on all the
R & D projects.

[jbeckton]

Electricity will always be around, it is not a finite resource. It is only limited by our ability to harnass it which is too FF dependent but need not be. If we can develop a technology that relies on electricity, not FF, we have a good chance.

Electricity is only the energy carrier, the work still needs to be done to transmit via electricity. When electricity is transmitted through power lines it is only carrying the work being done by the Steam or Gas turbine, which is powered by boiling water or expanding gasses.

Actually its carrying the power from the generator which was generated from the work done by the gasses expanding from high pressure to low pressure against the turbine blades producing shaft work that drives the generator. But thats besides the point.

I work for one of the largest PG companies in the world and short of the gas combustion turbine, Boiling water is the only way we have figured out how to produce "work" that can be transmitted through a power line. There are NO new fixes on the horizon, I know this becasue I am involved with hiring engineers on all the
R & D projects.

You are in charge of hiring for R&D and you think that only gas and steam turbines are the only ways to produce electricity? What about wind and hydro turbines? What about nuclear reactors, what about PV cells?

There are many ways of generating electricity that do not involve FF. I know this because I am a power generation engineer.

The efficiency of a FF plant isn't going to improve much. Tell me, what is your R&D team working on?

Perhaps I should get my resume out there..........

[smallpoxgirl]

The problem is that it is so extremely energy inefficient. Worse than the ICE

It seems like a pretty cool deal at first glance, but this seems like the unavoidable problem. The engine in the aircar functions essentially the same as an ICE.

The tanks on the car hold 90 cubic meters of air at 300bar. SourceThat's 2.7 gigajoules of energy. A gallon of gasoline, by contrast, has 130 megajoules of energy. So the tanks hold the same energy as about 20 gallons of gasoline. It only gets 200km on a fill, so that's an equivalent efficiency of about 6 miles per gallon.

2.7 gigajoules = 750 kwh. Assuming the compressor is 33% efficient, it would consume 2250 kwh of electricity. At $0.10 per kwh, it would cost $225 to fill the tank.

Anybody find an error in my calculations?

[clueless]

Actually its carrying the power from the generator which was generated from the work done by the gasses expanding from high pressure to low pressure against the turbine blades producing shaft work that drives the generator. But thats besides the point

Wow - Thanks for the clarification

You are in charge of hiring for R&D and you think that only gas and steam turbines are the only ways to produce electricity? What about wind and hydro turbines? What about nuclear reactors, what about PV cells?

Did I say I was in charge ??? I said involved...I know better than to cross an engineer with something to prove..

WInd turbines outside of tax credits will never be profitable
PV's are a joke that will never make any real difference
Hydro is all used
Nuclear boils water

And my point is simply if you follow the money you will see the direction we are heading. Coal and Nuclear.

You really need to take a step back - It's OK nobody is attacking your "Turf".

How about getting me your analysis and feasablity in retrofitting the entire country with Wind, Hydro and PV's ???

[jbeckton]

The problem is that it is so extremely energy inefficient. Worse than the ICE

It seems like a pretty cool deal at first glance, but this seems like the unavoidable problem. The engine in the aircar functions essentially the same as an ICE.

The tanks on the car hold 90 cubic meters of air at 300bar. SourceThat's 2.7 gigajoules of energy. A gallon of gasoline, by contrast, has 130 megajoules of energy. So the tanks hold the same energy as about 20 gallons of gasoline. It only gets 200km on a fill, so that's an equivalent efficiency of about 6 miles per gallon.

2.7 gigajoules = 750 kwh. Assuming the compressor is 33% efficient, it would consume 2250 kwh of electricity. At $0.10 per kwh, it would cost $225 to fill the tank.

Anybody find an error in my calculations?

The article stats that it costs less than 1 euro to travel 100 kilometers.

1 euro = 1.33 dollars
100km=62.14 miles

So you are looking at $0.02 per mile. If the average ICE car gets 21 mpg and gas costs $2.75 a gallon, you pay about $0.13 cents per mile.

So if the article is accurate you get about 6 times the fuel economy by sacraficing a lot of horsepower and safety features.

[jbeckton]

You really need to take a step back - It's OK nobody is attacking your "Turf".

How about getting me your analysis and feasablity in retrofitting the entire country with Wind, Hydro and PV's ???

http://peakoil.com/fortopic27418-0.html

The country will most likely burn every last bit of recoverable coal, thats not in question. What happens as coal regualtions push price up and renewables continue to become cheaper?

You never did say what your team was R&D'ing.

[clueless]

You never did say what your team was R&D'ing.

SOFC's

Purely overhead.

[MacG]

The problem is that it is so extremely energy inefficient. Worse than the ICE

It seems like a pretty cool deal at first glance, but this seems like the unavoidable problem. The engine in the aircar functions essentially the same as an ICE.

The tanks on the car hold 90 cubic meters of air at 300bar. SourceThat's 2.7 gigajoules of energy. A gallon of gasoline, by contrast, has 130 megajoules of energy. So the tanks hold the same energy as about 20 gallons of gasoline. It only gets 200km on a fill, so that's an equivalent efficiency of about 6 miles per gallon.

2.7 gigajoules = 750 kwh. Assuming the compressor is 33% efficient, it would consume 2250 kwh of electricity. At $0.10 per kwh, it would cost $225 to fill the tank.

Anybody find an error in my calculations?

Yea. 90 m3 must refer to the expanded volume at 1 bar. Otherwise it will be a hell of a large tank. 300 liters at 300 bar is more reasonable.

[clueless]

http://peakoil.com/fortopic27418-0.html

The country will most likely burn every last bit of recoverable coal, thats not in question. What happens as coal regualtions push price up and renewables continue to become cheaper?

You never did say what your team was R&D'ing.

Saving 300 dollars on an electric bill will be the least of the problems of a place like LA/OC.

And besides you cannot run an industrial automated factory on photvoltaics, Wind turbines or anything else other than a combustion or steam turbine. With one third to one half the population unemployed you won't have to worry about how the electiic bills are being paid.

So many people talk about the "consumer" and how the "consumer" will "pay his fuel bills" - When what we really need to look at is industrial power generation/consumption. That is the driver - When power bills push inflation up and/or we cannot meet demand, you can forget it - Consumer confidence will plummet and that will be all she wrote for the US economy...

[Windmills]

It's possible that renewables won't become cheaper, but rather will follow the cost changes that the rest of the economy experiences since they are linked to it. Unless they are being produced completely separately from the rest of the world economy, they are going to get expensive along with everything else as long as they depend on inputs and supports from the wider economy. I suppose the real question is not whether they'll be dragged along in the directions the economy takes, but rather to what degree and whether or not the net result will see them as a competitive source of energy.

It's a race against time to work out all the kinks in alternative energy systems. We'll probably buy some of that time by burning every last bit of coal using "dirty coal" technology. I'm doubtful that it will be enough.