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The Pressurized Air Car?

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Air car

Unread postby vampyregirl » Sat 27 Feb 2010, 15:05:30

Luxembourg based MDI invented the first car to run on compressed air and it is now being produced in India as the CityCat by Tata Motors. Ney York based Zero Pollution Motors is now licensed to produce it in North America and they are aiming for a loftier goal, an air hybrid with a 1k mile range. The CityCat has a range of 65 miles between compressed air fillups.
The only bad thing i see with this awesome new technology is will the government tax the air that we breathe now because it has become a commodity?
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Re: Air car

Unread postby TheDude » Sat 27 Feb 2010, 15:36:32

site:peakoil.com forum Air car - Google Search

Regular search ist kaput. Peruse archives before posting or mods will PM you some garlic. Image
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Re: Air car

Unread postby Ferretlover » Sat 27 Feb 2010, 17:46:39

What type of energy will be required to compress that air?
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Re: Air car

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 27 Feb 2010, 20:19:36

Ferretlover wrote:What type of energy will be required to compress that air?


Well most modern compressors are electric but in the period a hundred years or so ago mechanical compressors worked on steam or wind or water driven cam shafts. Heck the pneumatic air compressor we use for the jackhammer at work runs on diesel fuel with a motor that could burn a lot of different grades of oil in a pinch.
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Re: Air car

Unread postby JRP3 » Sat 27 Feb 2010, 22:31:15

Air car is a joke, it doesn't actually run on air, it runs on whatever fuel is used to compress that air, usually by combustion to generate electricity. It's an inefficient energy conversion process. Been discussed before:
http://peakoil.com/energy-technology/compressed-air-car-t28534.html
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Re: Air car

Unread postby Ferretlover » Sun 28 Feb 2010, 00:09:11

JRP3 wrote:Air car is a joke, it doesn't actually run on air, it runs on whatever fuel is used to compress that air,

I guess I do have to note when I am being just a little bit sarcastic! :lol:
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Re: Air car

Unread postby JRP3 » Sun 28 Feb 2010, 00:20:06

Ferretlover wrote:
JRP3 wrote:Air car is a joke, it doesn't actually run on air, it runs on whatever fuel is used to compress that air,

I guess I do have to note when I am being just a little bit sarcastic! :lol:

Actually I was replying to the original poster who was talking about air as a commodity. Maybe that was sarcasm as well [smilie=dontknow.gif]
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Re: Air car

Unread postby eastbay » Sun 28 Feb 2010, 03:24:54

Ferretlover wrote:
JRP3 wrote:Air car is a joke, it doesn't actually run on air, it runs on whatever fuel is used to compress that air,

I guess I do have to note when I am being just a little bit sarcastic! :lol:



I got it immediately! :-D This is almost as energy inefficient as hydrogen powered cars.... which, by the way, we hear little of anymore.
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Re: Air car

Unread postby JRP3 » Sun 28 Feb 2010, 09:18:54

They are still out there, lurking, waiting, looking for scraps of funding to continue their hydrogen fairy tale.
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Re: Air car

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 28 Feb 2010, 13:57:48

Ask any scuba shop owner about tank explosions. That's why they fill tanks in a trough of water - explosions are very common
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Re: Air car

Unread postby vampyregirl » Wed 03 Mar 2010, 14:07:26

I'm not some naive fool. I know that the electric or gas powered pump used to compress the air is not zero emission even if the car is. I just find the air car an interesting concept.
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Re: Air car

Unread postby JRP3 » Wed 03 Mar 2010, 14:09:25

Honestly, what's interesting about a really inefficient way to use energy for transportation? That's all it is.
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Re: Air car

Unread postby rangerone314 » Wed 03 Mar 2010, 14:43:24

Methane-powered transportation:

eat some pinto beans and then hop on a skateboard...
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The car that runs on AIR

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 26 Feb 2014, 18:38:24

The car that runs on AIR: Peugot reveals plans for hybrid set to hit the streets next year

Peugeot has revealed plans to begin selling the first air powered car next year.

Based on a Peugeot 208, it will combine a normal engine with a radical new system that runs on compressed air.

The firm says the car could reduce petrol bills by 80% when driven in cities.

The system works by using a normal internal combustion engine, special hydraulics and an adapted gearbox along with compressed air cylinders that store and release energy. This enables it to run on petrol or air, or a combination of the two.

Air power would be used solely for city use, automatically activated below 43mph and available for ‘60 to 80 per cent of the time in city driving’. By 2020, the cars could be achieving an average of 117 miles a gallon, the company predicts.

The air compression system can re-use all the energy normally lost when slowing down and braking. The motor and a pump are in the engine bay, fed by a compressed air tank underneath the car, running parallel to the exhaust.



The revolutionary system will be able to be installed on any normal family car without altering its external shape or size or reducing the boot size, provided the spare wheel is not stored there. From the outside, an air-powered car will look identical to a conventional vehicle.

A spokesman said: ‘We are not talking about weird and wacky machines. These are going to be in everyday cars.’


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Re: The car that runs on AIR

Unread postby Antaris » Thu 27 Feb 2014, 01:40:05

I drive an Imiev and 2000 Explorer. One charges the battery when I touch the brake pedal, the other gives off a cloud of dust and needs new pads every 20,000 miles. AIR makes a lot of sense. Touch the brake and fill the tank with air, touch the the gas pedal and AIR makes you go forward. AIR does it without using a lot of rare earth. One day I hope to drive a horse, but may just walk instead.
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Re: The car that runs on AIR

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 27 Feb 2014, 07:08:33

About bloody time, air cars have been discussed on po dot com since 2004 but this i the first time a major manufacturer has done much with the concept. Everything up till now was small scale shop or home conversion work.
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Re: The car that runs on AIR

Unread postby Poordogabone » Fri 28 Feb 2014, 22:37:02

One charges the battery when I touch the brake pedal

Well it recaptures some of the kinetic energy that would otherwise have been wasted by using the breaks. Better yet is to avoid using the breaks all together unless it's absolutely necessary, drive as if you had no breaks and avoid fast accelerations (hyper-miling), btw who needs a hybrid? my step father once owned a Citroen 2CV (2 horse power) i think top speed was about 45 miles/hour going downhill. 2-stroke engine, extremely low maintenance and about 75 miles/gallon.
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Re: The car that runs on AIR

Unread postby dolanbaker » Sat 01 Mar 2014, 20:28:28

Poordogabone wrote: my step father once owned a Citroen 2CV (2 horse power) i think top speed was about 45 miles/hour going downhill. 2-stroke engine, extremely low maintenance and about 75 miles/gallon.

Ant the crazy thing was that when Citroen made that car, fuel consumption wasn't a main factor!
It was a car for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford one. It should also be noted that there are many motorbikes that have worse fuel consumption figures than that.

I used to get a lift to work in a Renault 4, a similar type of car.

Edit: I suppose that French car designers were aware that France did not have any real oil supplies to speak of so were more aware than others that it all had to be imported.
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Re: The Pressurized Air Car?

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sun 30 Jul 2017, 02:37:53

At 4 a.m., bleary-eyed and barely awake, I spoke with Cyril Nègre on the other side of the world. He was Skyping with me from France, where the company established by his father, Motor Development International (MDI), was quietly working on a form of transportation technology that could change the way we navigate our cities.

MDI’s product is an air-powered car called Airpod, and it looks like something that belongs on The Jetsons — half smart car, half futuristic bubble-cycle. If you’re a fan of Shark Tank reruns, you may have seen the April 2015 episode that featured Pat Boone and Ethan Tucker pitching the Airpod. The duo eventually secured $5 million in investment funds for Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM), the US licensee for MDI’s technology.

Since then, news has been scant about the Airpod in the US. ZPM’s Facebook page hasn’t been updated since April, and even then, the post was about SpaceX's successful Dragon launch.

When I connected with Cyril, I expected to discuss some of the delays facing ZPM’s US development. I didn’t expect to see news on MDI’s website the next day about the passing of Cyril’s father, Guy Nègre, the engineer who wanted to help save the planet.

Here’s the status on Airpod — and the innovations that are close to becoming a reality.

The Air Powered Car: What Is An Airpod?

Guy Nègre — inventor, car enthusiast, staunch environmentalist, and former Formula 1 racing engineer — loved the freedom afforded by cars. Back in 2002, he told Reuters, “I'm a firm believer that the car means freedom and people will not give up freedom, no matter what it's doing to the environment … So the only way to save the planet is to come up with a car that doesn't wreck it."

The Airpod is MDI’s solution to planet-wrecking transportation. Currently in its second iteration, the Airpod 2.0 is a four-wheel vehicle with an 80 kilometer per hour (50 mph) maximum speed and 120 kilometer (75 mile) range. “It’s possible to extend the range using a dual engine mode,” Cyril tells me, “and with half a litre of petrol plus the air tank, we will be able to achieve around 400-450 kilometers (249-280 miles) in range.”

Naturally, the Airpod’s attention-grabber was its engine that runs on compressed air — so why incorporate an engine that can also use petrol? “The first [Airpod] was good for car sharing or renting cars, but not for private people," Cyril says. "So we decided to modify the car, and now, we are in the process of building the molds for first production.”


https://greenfuture.io/transportation/air-powered-car/
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Re: Gas-to-Liquids (GTL)

Unread postby StarvingLion » Fri 05 Oct 2018, 21:42:23

Off topic for Carnot the Failed chemist because he believes in experts in Thermodynamics. Here are some of his frauds in action:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles ... gs.rOnH0BU

The air has gone out of LightSail Energy. The Berkeley-based startup hoped to revitalize compressed-air energy storage with a more nimble and efficient technology. Its quest "to produce the world’s cleanest and most economical energy storage systems" drew funding from VC royalty including Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel and Bill Gates. But after eight years and approximately $80 million raised, it has run out of cash before reaching commercialization. The company went through another round of layoffs and has essentially ceased operations, co-founder and CEO Stephen Crane confirmed to Greentech Media. "It may come back in some form or another, but at the moment it’s kind of in hibernation while we try to figure out what our future is," Crane said of the company. That future should be clear by February, he added. The company was developing a compressor technology that Crane said operated for hundreds of hours, as well as gas storage tanks that endured "months of field trials." Both technologies, he said, were ready to commercialize, but suffered from insufficient funding. The company raised more money than most cleantech startups ever see, having come up in the heady days before the venture funding bubble burst. LightSail sported many of the trappings of a Silicon Valley darling, with grand promises and a larger-than-life founder to match. Reports eventually emerged of extravagant spending and aloof leadership. The company purported to fill a glaring gap in the electrical grid -- cheap, long-duration storage -- with a superior understanding of the laws of thermodynamics. The pitch worked for investors, but failed to translate into physical reality.

Storage iconoclasts
Most recent growth in the energy storage industry has been in lithium-ion, with a few companies chasing alternatives like flow batteries or thermal storage. LightSail instead chose to resurrect the concept of compressed-air energy storage, which had languished due its requirement for geologically specific underground caverns to pump full of air. The company's central proposition was that it could perform CAES aboveground in specialized carbon fiber tanks, thus achieving cheap and scalable storage for surplus renewable energy. There was also an idea early on about using this technology to power cars. No other company had pulled off the aboveground compression trick, in part because compressing air wastes considerable energy as heat, and putting it in smaller vessels sacrifices the massive scale that helps CAES be competitive underground. Startup SustainX gave it a shot, but gave up in 2015 and switched over to traditional underground storage. LightSail founder and Chief Scientist Danielle Fong emerged in 2009 with new IP. By spraying the tank with water droplets, she claimed the process would save heat energy and boost efficiency. Fong, who did not respond to a request for interview, also happened to be a wunderkind who'd dropped out of school to start a Ph.D. at Princeton's plasma physics lab by the age of 17. It was a heady time, in the late 2000s, before cleantech VCs had gotten hung up on all the money they were about to lose. So Fong and co-founder Crane gathered an eventual total of $80 million from some of the biggest names out there and got started.

Delayed satisfaction
Fong repeatedly insisted, across multiple public platforms, that the technology really worked. But it never got far enough to deploy outside of the studio. "We would have liked to have gotten a bit further," Crane said. Eric Wesoff chronicled the company's descent in a May 2016 article, at which point LightSail had gone through two rounds of layoffs that cut a staff of 60 down to 15 or so. At GTM's 2015 Energy Storage Summit, Fong explained the company was pivoting to pressurized tank manufacturing to yield short-term profits, which could then tide the company over until the storage product arrived. After claiming, in 2014 and 2015, to have sold tanks for compressed gas storage, Fong tweeted in 2016 that the company was shipping its first product. A source familiar with the situation explained to Wesoff why this business was unlikely to succeed: "The CNG industry is very conservative; any mission-critical CNG or mobile pipeline applications would favor the incumbent with a strong operating history rather than a glamorous upstart from Silicon Valley with no experience, no fleet, no service network, even if they can claim cost advantages." More recently, the tanks had attracted interest from members of California's burgeoning hydrogen fuel-cell industry, Crane said. LightSail won three California Energy Commission grants to demonstrate its technology, but withdrew from them without fulfilling the projects. Along the way, the company spent money on assets like gourmet coffee and kombucha on tap. Sources reported that Fong was "getting paid $225,000 a year when coming to work one day per week on average." She also got a company loan to buy a Tesla Model S. It's not yet clear whether a new investor will emerge, or if the company will be forced to sell its scraps via bankruptcy. After years of attempts to reimagine compressed-air storage, all the profits still lie buried deep beneath the earth.
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