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MDI says that in air-only, zero-emission mode in urban settings, the car has a range of up to 125 miles, but that drops to about 50 miles when it is driven at faster speeds up to 60 miles per hour. A full charge of air, including the electricity used to compress it, is expected to cost less than $3. In the dual-mode version, with assistance from fuel, speeds can reach 100 miles per hour, and range expands to 900 miles on less than a gallon of fuel (although the faster one goes, the shorter the range).
The idea is for the car to provide zero pollution when driven in cities, and lower emissions when driven faster, as in suburban and rural settings. "It's a little more like a hybrid," says Haydon. "The new innovation will make it more appealing to the average buyer. In terms of the carbon dioxide emissions, it will have five times less than the average vehicle."
The first CAT car to be produced is called the OneCAT, a "utilitarian" car for urban and rural driving that's specifically designed for use in overcongested cities and priced in a range ($5,100 to $7,800) within reach of consumers in a developing economy, such as India.
The ultralight bodies of the vehicles would be made of glued-together fiberglass and injected foam, and the aluminum chassis would also be glued, not welded, to simplify manufacturing.
Before production of the CAT can begin in India, likely followed later by Spain and Australia, MDI says that it must start mass production of the cars at its factory in France. A spokeswoman at MDI's marketing office in Barcelona says that this will likely happen in September 2008.
But Frost & Sullivan's Rinek believes that there's limited chance that major automakers in the United States will take the Air Car seriously. He points to the need to build an infrastructure of compressor stations and the need to comply with strict safety standards. (The Air Car cannot be fueled using the air pumps currently found at some gas stations.)
"In North America, it's basically a nonstarter," says Rinek, admitting that there are limited niche markets. "The only potential, if any, would be for an inner-city, short-commute vehicle with an ultra-greenie owner."
Carnegie Mellon's computer-laden Chevy Tahoe wins the Urban Challenge and takes home the $2 million prize.
An MIT group hopes that its foldable electric vehicles will cut pollution, and ease congestion.
Zero-emission driving may be more than hot air.
It is mentioned that this engine is using the ambient temperature to warm the air, and power the 2nd stroke. This may work well in India and other tropical countries. But how about the winters of North America?
MDI now has a dual energy model: http://www.mdi.lu/english/oneflowair.php
When used in the compressed air only mode the exhaust is cold: 37* Fahrenheit who once read.
When used in the "external combustion" engine mode, the exhaust can be as hot as 120* Fahrenheit who once read.
So, in the context of a UN Treaty to build and drive global fleets of compressed air vehicles whose emissions temperatures are controlled by a weather radar and weather satellite "cloud computing" network (Ha, ha.), the dual energy compressed air car is not only transportation, it's weather control, and air purification.
"'Ah, Dad, do I have to?" "Until you can pay the $20 bonus we get for meeting our driving requirement, yes. Now 'Hop to it!' - before I have to touch my iWatch to mute the alarm, or do you want me to deduct that %5 charge from your allowance right now?" "I'm goin', I'm goin',"
What type of engine is used for this machine? (Technology). Is a piston based engine?
P.S.
The idea for a “air car” is very SMART, and has some advantages (refill of the car can’t be made “at home”, the “fuel” for this car must be bougth like you buy oil for standard machines)
Electric cars don’t have this “advantages” because electricity is something that everyone has at home.
I pondered this idea over the past few years and it seems that the normal piston engine could serve also as a compressor during regenerative braking, pumping air back into the tank. Conventional piston engines are little more than steam engines which use a volatile liquid to expand air when it's ignited. This makes for a very nice hybrid technology.
I love the part about getting power on the upstroke as well as the downstroke!
Actually. It has the ability to be plugged in and an on board sort of "alternator" can refill the tanks in about 4 hours. There is also options for a cold weather package.
Right Technology, Wrong Paradigm for North America?
I am not so sure that this technology is a nonstarter for today's North American car market, as the article implies. I think it may indeed be useful within a slightly different context.
This article explores the potential for vehicles powered solely by compressed air and hybrid vehicles using compressed air supplemented by a gasoline engine. An additional area of interest, however, is whether compressed air technology is useful in a hybrid vehicle where a conventional fuel engine is the primary power source and the compressed air serves as the supplementary power source. In other words, it would be very much akin to today's hybrid cars, except that compressed air is used as the dynamic energy storage medium as opposed to electric batteries. The big benefit is potential cost savings over the gas-electric hybrid approach.
Research has shown the value of this concept. For more information, see: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001552.html
Re: Right Technology, Wrong Paradigm for North America?
Right technology: I have studied and taught changing paradigms for years. You are so right that the AIR CAR requires a major shift in North Americas paradigm. However you must admit with the cost of OIL as it is we MUST shift something. It is extreemly difficult to make people change or break old paradigms, but it is now time to start. The AIR CAR is by far the best thing to be developed since electricity, and the internal combustion engine. We MUST give it a chance.
Article fails to mention that car is very very light weight.
Go strip 75% of the weight out your current car and you'll improve mileage, just don't expect to live through a crash.
Of course, it looks like they expect people to drive more slowly than is typical of gas-powered cards. In a place where everyone's driving one of these things, there might be the ancillary benefit of fewer/less severe accidents.
That's why they like to start selling those cars in India. Have you ever been in any big city in India?
The streets are always packed and the average vehicle speed is just a little faster than a bicycle/scooter.
Retrofitting and larger airtank
What would happen if you increased the air tank capacity and rigged the widget (engine) up to a flywheel to be used to generate electricity? Can this be done? By tying the solution to a solar panel for air charging, there may be a market for alternate power back up for homes or even power for rural environments.
Spin up the flywheel - disengage the airtank - recharge with solar and repeat as needed.
Re: Retrofitting and larger airtank
...add a wind turbine to the roof so it generates electricty when it moves , and if all else fails have low paid imigrant worker push the car around . simple . could this be done ????
Re: Retrofitting and larger airtank
How about retrofitting the cars we are driving now?
Either electric or compressed air with solar recharging of the electrics or the compressed air driving our V8s. Reverse the timing + or - of 180
degrees and drive those monstrous piston with
compressed air. most of our cars go less than the
range of plug in compressed air.
My 1990 Lexus 400 gets 30 on the road with a
V8, yes and I caught a 14 foot long Rainbow trout before it ate Montana.
Making use of what we have is either hydrogen, compressed air or electric and the batteries are
the limiting cost factor. Hydrogen or compressed air are the solutions for the Fords, GM and
MoPars we have now. Some of us have bought new once or twice but prefer a ride which
has been tested, its a horse thing.
Solar paint has been developed in Denmark with
more available energy output from the nano particles in the paint.
Burning fossil fuels is stupid, but some of us don't care if our legacy is the suffocation of our children's grand children.
The market is ready for something that works and
cost less than daddy's Oldsmobile, but is as
comfortable as uncle Bob's Cad or Christy's Benz.
Motor transmits the increased power, engine , fuel
that which makes the gears or axles turn.
No more carbon based fuel, fossil fuels let the
poor dead things lie.
I always like to take a problem to it's logical extremes. Consider this, compress the air till we get liquid air (the compressed air in the car as is proposed would have to remain hot, retaining it's energy, to work efficiently).
If we were to fill up with liquid air, the fill process would be little more difficult than with current liquid fuels, actually, a bit safer since there is no chance for fire or environmental pollution (consider the tanker disaster in Oakland).
As we "run" the car, we'd pass ambient air through a heat exchanger, forcing the air through a phase transition and heating it up as much as possible with ambient conditions -- leaving cooled air in our wake. We would, in effect, be satisfying the first law of thermodynamics, to it's most fundamental implementation; we'd be propelling the car with ambient heat, reducing the temperature of the air in the wake of the car.
As juvenile as Ayn Rand (in Atlas Shrugged) was with her, "extracting electricity from the air", in effect, we kind of can do something similar.
Now, we just need to build a frost-less heat exchanger!
I agree; We at darlap have designed what we think is an elegant design combining a series of hollow disks containing liquid air with ambient air moved between them by the boundary layer factor and spinning at a rate sufficient to strip the frost. Since we have this unit free to spin, we use the reaction turbine principle for a "hero's engine". The centrifugal force also (with the help of a pressure cap on the liquid air tank) serves as a charging pump. We restrict the outlet of this ambient "warming" air resulting in a temperature rise adding to efficiency. There may be something of interest to you on our website; darlap.com We have lost our funding possibilities while waiting for the IRS to approve our "not-for-profit" status. Apparently private research foundations are quite rare, and noone seems to have a slot for cryogenic energy storage.
bill michaels; founder/president DARLAP NFP
Guest (zeddy08)
In all these discussions on so-called "green" energy solutions, no-one talks about efficiency!
Efficiency is the make-or-break of any energy technology.
I see this process as an energy transport system consisting of 3 phases: Compressing the air, transporting the air, and recovering the energy.
Air compressors are notoriously inefficient. as the article states, a lot of energy is wasted as heat.
The air must be transported to the place where it is dispensed. Compressed air has very little energy per unit weight (c.f. fuel, for example), so therefore this part of the process must be inefficient.
Air motors are just as inefficient as compressors (being essentially the reverse process).
If it uses grid power to compress the air in the first place, then it simply moves the pollution to another place (the power station), and as it's inefficient, it produces more pollution than an equivalent fuel-powered car would.
Junk.
The low efficiency of compressing and expanding air is due to using isentropic compression and expansion. Much of the energy goes into temperature change. A pure isothermal would, neglecting friction, be totally efficient - but the best so far is about 95%, and isn't practical for transportation.
MDIs car has about half the efficiency of a PHEV or BEV (electrical part only), range is about the same, first cost is half. There aren't resource constraints. I'd like an E-volt, but for commuting 90 miles daily round trip, first cost is more critical. $20,000 would cover years of trips, more than are likely, especially if I can talk the boss into providing the electricity while I'm at work! ;-))
The dual fuel range extending feature is be nice also.
Efficiency is not as important as cost. Gasoline is a very inefficient fuel and yet a very practical one. If the fuel is cheap and available, the efficiency can be low, and the technology can still be viable.
Moreover, this garbage about moving the pollution to a different location has been debunked many times. While coal-fired power plants are dirty, only half of US electricity is generated that way, making EVs cleaner overall than gasoline; and emerging energy technologies are only going to make electricity generation cleaner.
The Air Car is real, videos on at http://www.youtube.com/user/CATvolution
Guy Negre of MDI Air Car engine that runs on compressed air. Emissions are only filtered air that's cleaner than outside air. 300 bars of pressure in carbon-fibre & kevlar air tanks. Car can travel at 110 km/hr and has a 150 km driving range. Refilling can be done by plugging in at home or at a special high-pressure air station. Dual-energy models use small amounts of bio-fuels that can extend the range to over 1400 kms. Pollution free vehicle that produces zero emissions. When the car stops at traffic lights, the engine stops so no energy is lost because there's no idling. See the videos on http://www.youtube.com/user/CATvolution or go to http://www.catvolution.com for more information.
I think that marketing these cars in North America would in fact be successful. The price of gas is so outrageously high that most people cannot afford to fill their tanks on a regular basis. With the cost of filling up the tank of one of these "air cars" at approximately 2-3 dollars, I think that people would immeadietly jump on the bandwagon so to speak and buy a car. Additionally, with this new financial crisis, people will be in even more desparate financial states than before. I believe that money is a big enough motivator to get people to buy these CAT technology cars.
Use compressed Nat Gas and you’ve got two energy sources, the high preasure energy and the flammable fuel.
Lately it is possible to build a combustion engine with all computer controlled valves. This sort of control provides the engine the ability to burn lean like a Civic or heavy like a Corvette as well as operate as an air compressor or an air motor.
With this new engine technology a car is able to run on air or combustible fuel (Compressed Nat Gas). The car could decompress some Nat Gas to start up and then combust the decompressed Nat Gas. Break to a stop in compressor mode while filing an air tank that you can later use to start the car rolling.
The engine doesn't need a starter motor and the battery isn't used to start the car.
Since the exhaust is cool it could be used as air conditioning.
I like the idea of the hybrid compressed air and battery vehicle. As a self contained sealed unit. I like this because when the battery fails...which they will i can still get it to the garage (or work first) so they can all be replaced under the 10year guarantee they will be offering.
I hope they offer battery guarantees.... or the EV will just be a very expensive vehicle for people when it goes wrong.
Having the two technologies separate is great, but lets combine and get a reliable vehicle for a change.
It could work as alternative or partial alternative to the plug in hybrid electric car. The air compressor powered by a 110/220v electric motor would also be the engine when the car runs. It could be a 4 stage compressor/quadruple expansion piston engine with intercooling/interheating between stages. The heat of compression can be stored in and recovered from an insulated tank of paraffin or another phase change material that melts somewhere between 60 and 90 degrees centigrade. The heat transfer fluid could be standard auto water-antifreeze solution or motor oil. The heat storage unit could enclose the compressed air tank(s). However it might make more sense to enclose the compressed air tank(s) in a phase change material that melts between 40 and 60 degrees centigrade. A piston engine would not need a transmission or reversing gear. It could also be easily used for regenerative braking. However rotary or quasiturbine engines might also work.
Now here is where it gets more interesting, if this compressed air engine is used in conjunction with a small gasoline (or diesel) engine the waste heat from the IC engine could boost the power and energy of the air engine. This could be more efficient than a hybrid electric car. The compressor motor can be used as an alternator while the IC engine is running to power the electrical system of the car and perhaps a small electric drive motor or two.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Gaetano Marano
246 Comments
>>> the only mid-term solution is the cellular-like electric car >>>
.
the zero-emissions/zero-fuel air-compressed car is a dream that (I hope) may become commercial
to-day's electric cars are more realistic and already are commercial products, but still have a lo range
then, the only mid-term solution could be the "cellphoneCAR":
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/033cellphoneCAR.html
.
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Weather Control
2 Comments
Re: >>> the only mid-term solution is the cellular-like electric car >>>
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/033cellphoneCAR.html
Cellphone car? Why not a UN treaty for global fleets of GPS controlled, dual energy, compressed air vehicles, buildings, and buoys - so a network of Weather Radars and Satellites can set the temperature of your compressed air exhaust to whatever it needs to be (37* Fahrenheit - 97* Fahrenheit) to reinforce the Hadley - Ferrel - Polar air cell boundaries, and weather patterns needed? Would you like to do this with me? No?
Meanwhile, perhaps a Christmass toy of a cell phone controlled fleet of miniature compressed air vehicles you can program to create "weather patterns" in a nice tent, that can also be used for camping [^] might be a good idea, no?
Google Translation: English » Russian, Spanish, etc.
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