The Air car runs on compressed air. It is being developed in Barcelona but needs investment to become a commercial reality.
Investors with 300,000 Euros can buy a licence to manufacture and distribute the cars in NZ.
If you don't have the money spare, you can still help the fledgling company by expressing an interest to buy on their website. This has no obligation and gives the company an indication of interest to present to potential investors.
This car will be zero polluting for city driving, and will take 3 minutes for 1.50 Euros to refill. (or 4 hours plugged into the wall at home)
See http://www.addict3d.org/news/10003/Car+Fueled+by+Air+Not+as+Cool+as+Inventor+Thought.html
for details of why they need investment.
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Originally submitted by Kazel on 12 Jan 2008
Air Car Links
http://www.theaircar.com/
http://www.addict3d.org/news/10003/Car+Fueled+by+Air+Not+as+Cool+as+Inventor+Thought.html
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=142&objectid=10486375
Air source?
You mention 3 minutes to refil, from what source? Every garage has a free air source but can that reach anywhere near a useful pressure? Or will one have to go to a recharge station for diving bottles to find the air at present, were one to get a car into NZ? At 200 km range these things sound really good. The hybrid rural option can of course recharge itself though that is using fossil fuel.
Noel
New Pumps
From the Website "As the energy is so easy to store, MDI anticipates the installation of air stations (Similar systems have been tried with GNV gas)."
Basically, the first people with the cars won't have an option, and will have to do the 4 hour compress refil at home. Eventually Petrol stations will supply air stations.
Incidentally, one of my favourite aspects of this car is that the air that comes out is between 0 and -15 degrees... a simple matter to vent into the car for air conditioning!
Pros and cons
I did a bit more checking. It seems dive tanks are either 230 bar or 300 bar. Looking at the compressor market, most high pressure compressors (5000 psi - 333 bar approx) have a pump capacity of 100 to 200 litres per minute and take 7 to 9 minutes to refil their tanks. So as long as you know where the scuba air fill stations are a driver of an air car would be able to get recharged at most towns in NZ, particularly on the coasts though some may manage only 200 bar and have tanks too small to charge directly an air car.
I roughly calculated the energy in a 300 litre 300 bar tank as 40.5 MJ. The web site says 46 MJ. I cannot see anything about the engine on the site to convert this directly into performance. It seems to me the energy density of the tank is much greater than can currently be achieved with an electric car though the operating region of the motor is very narrow requiring the starter motor to get it up to too many revs for a parking operation with a top speed before using liquid fuel of no more than 60 km/hr. Thats fine for city use of course. An electric car has significant advantages over the air car in performance and simplicity it seems to me, but at present the disadvantage of insufficient energy density, so the air car may get and keep its place. I would like to see more on performance versus air pressure.
Tata should give the air car's realisation a big boost. Who, I wonder, is the New Zealand dealer mentioned?
Your comment about the low exhaust temperature means there will be no shortage of ice blocks on a summers day but for heating they are talking about liquid fuel.
Noel
Electric cars do have it!
I have to take back part of what I wrote above. With Lockheed Martin getting in on the act the EEstor high voltage super capacitor looks closer to production than I thought. See here:
http://www.bhfo.org/news/news-articles/lockheed-martin-might-validate-eestor-with-new-contract.html
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEstor
An ESU (Energy Storage Unit), 4.6 times the size of my car battery, weighing 150 kilos, packs in 52 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to drive a small electric car up to 800 km. It can be recharged in 5 minutes as it is a capacitor, not a battery, and can store its charge for a very long time, loosing 0.01% of its total energy storage per month. The maximum voltage is 3500V which requires for consumer applications an exceptional dielectric supplied by barium titanate. The certification of the production of this material was completed early in 2007.
This ESU is said to have 2.5 times the storage capacity of Lithium Ion batteries at a fraction of the weight and volume and half the cost. It represents a 90% reduction in weight over lead acid batteries and has an almost indefinite life, whereas batteries that have to reverse chemistry to be recharged (hence the long charge time), fail after several hundred cycles - fail means that at some point they hold so much less than their rated capacity as to be no longer useful. Off the top of my head I recall seeing 70% as the cut-off figure.
One of the investors in EEstor is the ZENN motor company (Feel Good Cars - Canada). They produce a lead-acid hatchback good for up to 56 km at 40km/hr. They expected to have a car using the ESU by the end of 2007 but bad market reaction to their investment knocked the value off their stock. The latest news has bounced their stock back up so maybe we will see a car running on an EEstor super capacitor some time this year, if only a prototype. A prototype that validates the claims is what everyone is waiting for.
Noel