No im not talking about an air..plane car but one powered by compressed air. I first read about this and was shocked at the range something like 200 miles per charge at 60 MPH recharge in 3 min or 4 hrs with the on board compressor.  Sounds to good to be true right, well...the holding tanks 3 of them hold 3000 lbs of presure each. Thats one hell of a bomb if punctured!!!  The good thing they are making them from carbon fiber so if punctured they wont explode...?

They are testing in europe now, the engine is a modified piston engine and sounds alot like a normal car.  I could see me owning one of these and flying the bird as i pass gas stations!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFDqcu8oJ4

I had a CO2 BB pistol,, I liked shooting it, but I didnt like buying the CO2. Id expect a CO2 powered engine to be Just a bit Pricey to run,

I want one!....   a few solar panels at home, to run the compressor and you're runnin' pure green...

Now,.. consider the bike version,.. with the exhaust output being ice cold, clean, air?....
Oooooh!.... air conditioned motorcycle!...  ...

I actually heard about this several years ago. From what I can tell it all works pretty much as advertised. While the motor is a piston motor... it is not anything like a internal combustion engine.

The air is simply a store of energy, just like a battery would be.  There is energy used to charge the tanks, there really isnt that much of a "savings" in energy  used over other ideas. But, the choice of what produced the energy to pressurize the tanks means a country/area could have transportation based on something other than oil, which itself IS a pretty big deal.

The carbon fiber tanks is stronger, and as I understand it, does not fail catastrophically (explode). Instead, when punctured they just kinda "fart" the air out.

As I said I read up on this years ago, and it has kinda gone dead since. Such ideas cant flourish with gas prices going up and down. It really is hard to beat good old gas for a source of energy for transportation.

Also an Aussie has one that looks good as well. I might need to check up on how he is doing.

These things are not eco friendly- you have to get the energy from somewhere. If electric you get the electricity from coal powered generators, or nuclear generators, or to a small degree hydro electric generators. Hydrogen takes more energy to manufacture than it gives back. If air you need to use electricity to compress it. Ethanol requires a lot of corn (arable land) and energy to manufacture. So where is the gain?
If everyone had electric cars could you imagine the drain on the power grid??

arteacher wrote on 07/08/12 at 15:24:28:


I had heard this argument before which is why I prefaced my post like I did. You are right.. this requires massive amounts of power from the electrical grid. But I disagree that they "cant be" eco-friendly.. such as you stated using a hydro-electric dam or solar. The current state of oil is getting pretty bad (as a user of power). It takes power to turn oil into gas.. and thats once you shipped it barrel by barrel half-way around the globe. Gasolines value is a store of energy while in the car. Its certainly not eco-friendly, nor very efficient.  But of course at some point we leave  the cool factor of the car.. and get into the politics of energy.. which is a thread for a different forum...

Drifter wrote on 07/09/12 at 04:42:07:

This is, knock your socks off, cool!...  ...

Drifter wrote on 07/09/12 at 11:01:35:

Feeling a bit gassy 'bout now... ...


Fight terrorism... get yer' groceries n' ride to work,.. on air... ...