Saturday, January 05, 2008

Air Car?

BBC News is reporting that a French company has developed a pollution-free car which runs on compressed air. India's Tata Motors has the car under production and it may be on sale in Europe and India by the end of the year.

The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations and can go 200 km on a 1.5 euro fill-up -- roughly 125 miles for $3. The top speed will be almost 70 mph and the cost of the vehicle as low as $7000.

5 comments:

jenhargis said...

"Specially equipped gas stations?" I'm sure the US government will figure out some way to make it impossible for us to come out ahead on this.

MT said...

The concept sounds the same as a wind-up car. I can believe 70 mph in the first mile, but wouldn't it be 0.7 mph for the 124th mile or so? I'd also be afraid of my car or the pump exploding on fill up. What psi are we talking?

Anonymous said...

Um, it takes energy to compress that air. It may be that the car itself doesn't spew out anything but used air, but something back along the line was burning fossil fuels or uranium atoms or whatever.

Anonymous said...

i hope that would be commercialized for world consumer

george.w said...

Yes, the electric mains track back to some energy source (we have windmills here in Illinois) but even burning coal - worst case scenario - they can be more environmentally sound than mobile carbon-burning engines. Many people don't realize that one gallon of gasoline in their tanks represents something like three gallons of crude oil pumped out of the ground. And the efficiency of a car engine using that gasoline, is abysmal.