This looks great!
My only question is how much energy does it take to compress the air need for their 200km trip. That energy must come from somewhere (like a coal burning electricity plant). On the flip side, the cost can't be too high if 1.5 euros fills your tank. As a bonus I'm sure that some contraption could be designed that allows the driver to manually compress air through human power (in case you run out of air). Very cool stuff.
(HT: Cliff Schecter)
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Yeah, you're not going to get around the fact that energy is required to move a car. However, this eliminates many of the problems of other types of cars: Batteries have nasty stuff in them and eventually need to be replaced, and of course fossil fuels cause not only CO2 emissions but also other forms of pollution.
If you use a green energy source like solar or wind power, you've got a pretty darn ecologically sound product.
is there a solar powered air compressor on the market? maybe one that's small enough to fit in the trunk? or a human-powered one?
I'm suddenly struck with an old-timey image of cranks on the grills of cars....
How long before this auto is allowed in the states, i wonder.
great story, thx.
Hmmm. This leads to thinking about what could be accomplished with a compressed air/electric hybrid -- essentially replacing the internal combustion engine of a Prius with one of these compressed air engines.
If nothing else, widespread adoption of this kind of technology in metro areas could help a great deal in reducing local air pollution.
It'll take one heck of a lot of pumping to achieve the pressures needed for this baby. Even standard forecourt compressors aren't up to the job. But it's still a lot more practical than the fabled hydrogen car...
"So there's this car and it runs on compressed air man!"
"So I guess it's not a boat?"
(That 70s Show? Anyone?)
I'm no physicist, but I think that at least some of the energy is not stored in the compressed air. Compressed air sucks heat from it's surroundings when it expands, so at least a part of the energy comes from the environment, possibly all of it. Some portion of the energy required to compress air is released as heat and can be recaptured for heating. Possibly an efficient compressed air production plant could provide heating and the compressed air would come at virtually no extra cost or vice versa?
Maybe the heat from an air compressor could even be used to heat water enough to run a turbine producing electricity.