Compressed-Air Car Nears Trial 173
DeviceGuru writes "Air France and KLM have announced plans to conduct a six-month trial of a new zero-emission, compressed-air powered vehicle. The AirPod seats three, can do 28 mph, and goes about 135 miles on a tank of compressed air. Motor Development International, the vehicle's developer, expects the AirPod to reach production by mid-2009, and to sell for around 6,000 Euro. Initially, it will be manufactured in India by Tata Motors, and distributed in France and India."
i for one... (Score:5, Funny)
...would hate to see someone siphon fuel from this car!
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yeah, that would really blow your mind...
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Re:i for one... (Score:5, Funny)
...would hate to see someone siphon fuel from this car!
Siphoning the first half would be easy. The second half would be ...interesting.
Re:i for one... (Score:4, Funny)
But on the other hand when the AirPod runs out of compressed air the driver only needs to get a blow job to keep on going.
That's a seller right there.
Brrr. (Score:2, Insightful)
Parts of this thing will get fucking cold. Just imagine all the heat lost when the compressed air is let to cool down.
Oh well, not like I care about the environment or anything.
Re:Brrr. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parts of this thing will get fucking cold.
In India thats a feature.
28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street... (Score:3, Interesting)
28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street travel.
The concept is not entirely worthless though. If you apply the power train to a bicycle frame you have a very powerful upgrade to a standard bicycle, and with the even higher power to weight ratio you have a considerable speed upgrade as well.
I predict this will flop pretty badly because of this speed limitation, and if it starts to take off people will have them banned as "moving road blocks".
I, for one, would not tolerate an urban landscape clogged by a bunch of people who can't go faster than my grandmother. I hope they also come standard with the requisite continuously running directional indicator for those speeds.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:2)
I hope they also come standard with the requisite continuously running directional indicator for those speeds.
I don't understand what this means.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Funny)
you've never been behind someone going 15 miles under with the blinker on?
where do you live, rural north dakota?
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Here we would say that slow drivers are always wearing hats.
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"Here we would say that slow drivers are always wearing hats."
wat
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So you crazy Australians have direction indicating hazard lights? IT'S OVER THERE! LOOK AT WHERE I'M SHINING!
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If you hear that in the bush and the lights on you, best hit the deck quick smart.
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If you mean hazard lights, then just say 'hazard lights' and we will know what you are talking about, no need for the esoteric corporate buzz words.
At first I thought you were being sarcastic. Now I don't so...
Everywhere I have lived (up and down the east coast of the U.S.), we called those lights blinkers OR turn-signals. We only call them hazard lights when both the left and right are on (indicating a hazard). I haven't, until now, considered the term esoteric.
Then again I've stood in a line, but never in a queue...
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That's exactly what I was thinking. This seems to be in the "go-cart" class of cars.
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Most go karts go MUCH quicker than 28mph...
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about the US, but most European cities have speed limits of 50 km/h (around 31 mph), so it's not that far of.
Actually, I would not mind this type of car getting popular, since it would lower the air and noise pollution in crammed cities quite considerably.
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I don't know about the US, but most European cities have speed limits of 50 km/h (around 31 mph), so it's not that far of.
Actually, I would not mind this type of car getting popular, since it would lower the air and noise pollution in crammed cities quite considerably.
Zero-emissions, true, but I'd watch the videos before claiming this would lower noise pollution. It seemed sort of loud, at least in the video I watched.
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Still, it's a cool idea, especially if you build something like an exercise-bike powered air compressor. If filling the whole tank this way is too much work, you could use it to put a few psi in the tank.
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So on a flat surface it can't even reach the laughably slow speed limits imposed in most built-up areas. My route to work involves a steep incline with a 40 limit, I'd hate to be stuck behind one of these things going 5mph.
The main benefit of this of course is that you can refill it for free at the tyre-inflater.
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Laughable? Around here this thing'll go fast enough to lose control on some of our streets, and that's without them being down hill.
The 25mph speed limit for non-arterials is really pushing the limits of safety or sense. Anything pops out on the narrow streets and you've got to slam on the breaks.
There's a reason why speed limits are placed where they are. Roads are generally designed for a certain speed of traffic and that's usually the posted speed limit.
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The big difference is that you can buy an electric powered air compressor for your home and refuel there (hell, the car might even have one built-in).
You can't (easily) produce gasoline at home, which gives gas stations a form of monopoly.
I doubt gas stations would be able to gouge like you infer, there's going to be a lot more competition for producing compressed air if the idea takes off.
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There would be no competition for producing compressed air if there is no profit in producing compressed air.
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A lot of universities/government buildings/big companies around here have free charging stations in their lot for electric cars, because electricity is dirt cheap. I betcha if these take off, we'll start seeing free (or cheap) compressed air stations too.
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I thought the Brits went metric a long time ago?
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I heard a lot of noise. (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno about you, but in the first video I heard a very definite "jackhammer" sound. Not only that, the engineer was obviously defensive when asked about noise. "no, really, it's not loud, it only seems that way; it's different! People just need to learn to get used to it."
Yeah, it's got a noise problem.
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The engineer also said that it was 20dB quieter than a diesel engine in a regular car. That problem would go away if they switched to a multiple piston engine, but that would increase the weight.
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That's what I thought at first too. Watch the video again. Afaict, he said that a diesel engine was 20dB quieter when installed in the AirPod than the same engine in a normal vehicle. Which, frankly, just reenforces my point, that he's obviously defensive about how noisy his vehicle is. Noise was the only subject where the reporter was obviously concerned and the designer obviously uncomfortable and defensive. To me this fairly reeks of there being a problem with this.
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Where are you? The usual in-city speed limit here is 31 mph (50kph).
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Where are you? The usual in-city speed limit here is 31 mph (50kph).
I've seen two major types of urban design pattern here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, population ca. 200,000, the speed limit on arterials [wikipedia.org] is closer to 40 mph (64 km/h). If an arterial is the only road between where you live and where you work, and you drive a slow-moving vehicle such as a 20 mph bicycle or an air-powered car that can't break 28 mph, you must become an obstruction.
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Where are you? The usual in-city speed limit here is 31 mph (50kph).
I've seen two major types of urban design pattern here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, population ca. 200,000
Uh huh, and as we all know, every place in the world is just like Fort Wayne, IN.
The second problem is efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a heat engine, no more efficient than a petrol powered engine, but with the problem of low density energy storage. Basically it doesn't look good compared to batteries and electric drive.
It's a what now? (Score:2)
"It's a heat engine"
No it's not.
"Yes it is"
Allright then.. what's the heat source?
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Allright then.. what's the heat source?
The environment.
The compressed gas enters the expansion cylinder at environmental temperature and as it expands, it cools, in exactly the same way as the combustion gases in an Internal Combustion Engine cool as they expand.
Re:It's a what now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, no. It's not a heat engine, because heat is not causing expansion. In fact, as you point out, as it expands, it cools. This actually robs power from the engine! If the engine were to be heated somehow, it would probably be substantially more efficient. It is no more accurate to describe MDI's air engine as a "heat engine" than to describe a single pneumatic cylinder being driven by a compressor and used to do work as a "heat engine" - or by extension, a hydraulic cylinder. (Saying that liquids "don't compress" is a simplification of real-world physics, after all.) The heat is A) a byproduct of the gas compression problem, B) is not used to do work, and C) does not increase overall anyway. You don't actually increase heat energy when you compress a gas, aside from the wasted energy converted to heat by the compressor. You increase temperature, but only because you've put more mass into the same space. The heat per unit of mass does not change and that is why this is not a heat engine.
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On the upside, it's powered by a resource we have plenty of (especially in Washington D.C.): hot air.
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No need to go all the way to D.C.; we have plenty of hot air right here on Slashdot.
Possible advantages vs batteries (Score:2)
- It doesn't require huge amounts of scarce/toxic materials for the energy storage device.
- It doesn't need to convert electrical power to mechanical. Turn the valve and mechanical power is right there.
- If strong enough materials are used, the storage means should be lighter per joule stored.
Otoh, everybody has a source of as much electricity as they want already in their homes while most folks would need to use that electricity or some form of carbon fuels to get compressed air.
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From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
"Four other models, featuring speeds up to about 70 mph, are also on the drawing board."
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28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street travel. [...] I, for one, would not tolerate an urban landscape clogged by a bunch of people who can't go faster than my grandmother.
Check out French "car" maker Ligier. They, and others, have been producing similar vehicles for several years. Just diesel-powered, and less silly-looking. They are classified as mopeds, and are therefore not allowed to go faster than 45km/h (28mph). (Some models are classified as 4-wheel motorcycles and can go faster).
Not being classified as a "car" means they don't have to pass crash tests, so it's probably a good thing they don't go faster.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently you've never enjoyed realistic street travel in a crowded major city such as midtown New York or central London, where 28 mph would be pretty optimistic and, on some streets, illegal.
The AirPod looks oddly like the auto-rickshaws used in Delhi [nriinformation.com], or the tuk-tuk of Bangkok. [pbase.com] These devices generally are powered by internal-combustion engines that burn CNG (compressed natural gas) [wikipedia.org].
They're plenty fast enough for high-density urban surface street travel, and in India I've seen as many as 10 people crammed into one, traveling on rural highways.
I'm puzzled by the KLM-Air France connection, although I suppose these would make fine runabouts for airport workers. Sort of like golf carts.
On another note ...
Most of the comments I'm reading here completely miss the point of the compressed air, which is not a carbon-neutral fuel source but essentially just the equivalent of a wind-up spring. That lets the vehicle be powered by any energy source, depending on how the air is compressed. You get to carbon-neutral by using some non-petroleum power to compress the air, such as nuclear-generated electrical energy.
Electric cars work the same way, but I have to wonder about the environmental impact of disposal of the batteries, which do wear out.
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Apparently you've never enjoyed realistic street travel in a crowded major city such as midtown New York or central London, where 28 mph would be pretty optimistic and, on some streets, illegal.
nope, just rushour in downtown and midtown atlanta, where the public transit is a joke, assuring even more congestion. There are still plenty of places you can exceed 35, and personally I'd ease up and shove one of these little annoyances out of my way.
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and personally I'd ease up and shove one of these little annoyances out of my way.
I was taking you seriously on your other comment, but now I'm wondering if you are just an Internet Tough Guy(TM)
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Informative)
.
Trams and carts running in hazardous environments used compressed air one hundred years ago. The History of Compressed Air Vehicles [aircarfactories.com]
Compressed air is used to start the engines of a commercial jet - which means that KLM and Air France probably have the necessary infrastructure in place on the ground. Compressed-air engine [wikipedia.org]
The problem with the wind-up car is that you need a pretty big spring and pretty big key - and someone strong enough to wind it up.
Henry Ford chose gasoline for two fundamental reasons:
A gallon of gas could transport a family of four and their baggage about twenty-five miles - a full day's excursion by horse and buggy.
In 1896 you could economically ship and store a barrel of gasoline almost anywhere by rail.
For greater safety and profits, a dealer might do better burying a tank, buying in bulk and distributing from a hand pump.
You could make a decent living this way and never see rural electric service until the New Deal of the Thirties.
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You have concisely outlined here why oil is such a fantastic energy source. The stored potential energy in a tank of fuel is enormous, the ease by which it is transported is unprecedented in all our technology.
Fancy alternatives all fail at these incredibly important factors which add up to why we use oil. Personally I believe the best solution to our dirty energy problems is to make carbon neutral oil and use that. Its energy intensive to do but oil is so damn useful, and to hell with the current fads.
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.
In the 1890s, high-pressure steam, electricity and compressed air weren't available outside the biggest cities, at any price.
In 2008, it is still hard to see how you make the "alternative fuel" available, attractive and affordable outside the urban core.
The New York Times posted a story on the revival of the Erie Barge
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Electricity is not trivial nor efficient to store, so far the best we can do is pump a bunch of water up on top of a hill. That is literally the most efficient way to store energy in terms of electricity. Compressed steam and air are also non trivial to store and less space efficient than oil.
You cant charge batteries at the rate oils can be pumped, you cant store enough energy in a tank of air to rival a sloshing tank of oils at attmospheric pressure. Oils for better or worse are the most versatile form of
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This vehicle would be perfect for me. I have a 3.5 mile commute through 25 mph residential areas. And my favorite pub is only 1.5 miles away from home through residential streets as well :-)
The question becomes: are there enough people like me with similar commutes to make this vehicle commercially viable?
Similar electrics are already common (Score:3, Interesting)
I, too, argue that this is not very practical... but it is apparently pracical enough for many people to have bought them.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Informative)
I live in the UTC area of San Diego, and our main roads are three lanes each way and have speed limits of 45 miles/hour. That's great for the 20 seconds you spend accelerating to the next red light, which is probably about 2 minutes long.
In short, systems are more complicated than individuals. If you're the only person on the road, sure, you're going to go faster if you're going at 45mph than 28mph. But when there are intersections, stoplights, *other cars*, and traffic jams, are you going to go faster if everybody is trying to reach 45mph? Not necessarily, and in some cases emphatically NO.
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Fellow San Diegan here, and I concur: UTC is a royal pain to negotiate, especially in the afternoon. I'd just as soon walk, but sometimes I'm forced drive an 18-wheeler there. Talk about headaches.
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AirPod (Score:2)
How much energy is required to run the compressor to fill the high pressure air cylinders?
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Sounds like it should be an Apple brand.
How much energy is required to run the compressor to fill the high pressure air cylinders?
if it follows standard principles of mechanical engineering, far more than is redeemed through running the engine.
Re:AirPod (Score:5, Insightful)
How much energy is required to run the compressor to fill the high pressure air cylinders?
Obviously more than you get out of the drive line at the other end of the system. Compressed air does lose lot of energy to heat.
In fact calculating energy loss would almost be a textbook example in thermodynamics.
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Even worse than that, when the air is decompressed during use it gets cold. Icing up is a problem in colder climates. Free airconditioning in warmer climates though!
Re:AirPod (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AirPod (Score:5, Insightful)
Which can be dealt with more effectively than it can on each car.
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Surely you mean iAir, a device that would emit a playlist of scents.
Oh wait, it's not such a bad idea actually. First one to the USPTO wins!
Compressed air (Score:2)
Why two airlines? (Score:2)
Air France Industries and KLM Engineering and Maintenance will be evaluating the AirPod from the perspective of safety, ergonomics, deployment, reliability, and maintenance costs, among other factors.
Isn't all of the above a little bit removed from their core business? The only logical use I could think of for these cars in the airline business is transporting staff and luggage around airports, tarmacs and hangars...
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Maybe because they have a lot of experience in evaluating things with a large differential pressure?
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Perhaps for ground service vehicles in airports.
Yup (Score:2)
Damn those evil Automobile companies trying to keep the 28mph car away from the public.
Give the people air! (Score:3, Interesting)
28MPH when the car is fully charged, I assume? How about when the tank is 1/2 full? Does it have a heater for the winter?
A novel idea, but if we're going to make people movers, electric sounds like a more realistic implementation. An electric go-kart isn't that hard to mass produce.
Also, I'm wondering if these guys [promci.qc.ca] have mane any progress, lately.
These are hardly the best compressed air cars (Score:4, Interesting)
A company called MDI already has compressed air cars on the streets of Mexico city. Here is a youtube video with some interviews with them. They actually make several cars and can get over 60mph and 200mph per fillup. Fillup takes 3 minutes with pre-compressed air or 4 hours off a home compressor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFDqcu8oJ4 [youtube.com]
Note, disregard the commentators crackpot statement about perpetual motion at the end. The company isn't making that claim.
You also have pollution where the electricity is produced but that is true of all the alternatives being suggested today. It is far more efficient and economical to produce clean energy on a large scale at a power plant than it is at the vehicle level.
For that matter, with current scrubber technology even coal power is actually pretty clean. It's not renewable and isn't a solution but in the meantime its cleaner than burning gas on a car by car basis. It's certainly cleaner than creation and disposal rechargeable batteries.
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Maybe you should have looked at the summary a little bit closer and clicked on the links, specially the part about "Motor Development International, the vehicle's developer"...
How pathetic. (Score:2)
The general concept might be sound, but that thing is ugly, obviously underpowered, too vertical (top-heavy and un-aerodynamic), AND, even worse, shows poor engineering.
For example, a three-wheel "automobile"-type vehicle should always have the two wheels in front, not in the rear. A tricycle with only one wheel in front (this has two wheels, but they are too close together, basically g
A whole new meaing to.... (Score:2)
You need a couple of stewardesses for demos (Score:2)
"You can use this pipe to top up the air".
Oh, and if you don't have batteries you'll need the "whistle to attract attention" as well, of course..
Pfft. A breath of fresh air (etc etc).
The beauty is in intermittant sources (Score:2)
The real beauty (okay, there are several) in the air-car is in its relation to intermittent sources of energy.
That is, compressed air is a pretty reasonable storage mechanism for solar or wind energy. Also, for excess grid energy at night, when we ramp down some baseload power generators. When the wind goes down, you stop compressing as much. Comes up, compress some more. As long as you have enough wind over enough time, it averages out. Beautiful.
The dream of the battery-electric car is that the owner
The secret is to retain the heat of compression (Score:2)
There is a patent that explains how to radically increase the efficiency of compressed air energy storage.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5832728/description.html [patentstorm.us]
The key it to preserve the heat energy of compression. Most air compressors have multiple stages and cool the air in-between stages. This throws away a lot of useful energy, but they do it because otherwise the compressed air would be hot enough to melt iron.
There is a simple solution. Use wet air. The heat energy of compression is used to ch
4500psi? Somewhat daunting! (Score:2)
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You still have to compress the air somehow, either with an electric- or combustion-powered compressor.
How about a wind turbine? That might work well in the right environment.
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You could also use a foot pump if you aren't especially in a hurry.
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..only the battery alone would cost more than this complete car.
Re:I'm not sure I get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, about the 28mph : this is marketed as a city car. Most of the time, in cities, you'd be happy to be driving at that speed. In most bigger cities, the circulation is stop and go for the better part of the day, along with some awfull air polution. Only airpowered car would be a blessing .. I guess there is a reason why India is so interested in this technology.
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Seriously though, about the 28mph : this is marketed as a city car. Most of the time, in cities, you'd be happy to be driving at that speed. In most bigger cities, the circulation is stop and go for the better part of the day, along with some awfull air polution.
I don't think this really applies to "most" big cities. New York and LA maybe, but as someone who splits his time between Portland and Seattle 28MPH simply wouldn't work.
Reducing the car's viable market to 3-5 cities in North America where the speed wouldn't be a huge downside certainly wont pique the interest of shareholders.
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As someone else pointed out earlier, 28mph IS approximately the speed limit in european cities. How high is it in the USA?
From personal experience, I'd say that all big European cities, be it Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Munich, or even smaller ones like Heidelberg, Frankfurt, ... etc suffer from traffic congestion, and actually achieving 28mph is only possible late at night when nobody else is out.
It's definitely not supposed to be an alternative for long-range travel.
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As someone else pointed out earlier, 28mph IS approximately the speed limit in european cities. How high is it in the USA?
It depends on where and how far you're driving, but here in Portland, Oregon it ranges from approximately 30MPH on neighborhood streets to 60MPH on the freeway within the city. Once you get outside of the city limits, the limit on the freeway jumps to 70MPH.
There is a bit of variance depending on which state you live in here in America, but our limits are pretty typical for this country.
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IIRC... The max posted speed on I-5 anywhere in the state of Oregon is 65 mph. As for the freeways running in the city(Portland,OR) I believe most are posted at 55 mph(at least the 405 is). ;)
Cheers.
You're right. I was confusing Oregon's posted speeds with those of Washington thanks to all the trips I've had to make up to Seattle recently.
Still, my point remains: For most U.S. cities -- even the larger ones -- this car doesn't make a lot of sense.
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As a resident of a "medium sized" German city (Hannover), I'd have to say I don't think it'd work here. Yes, the speed limit around the city is the usual 50km/h, and if you go anywhere near the centre, you can expect to drive much slower a lot of the time... BUT, if you're going between one part of Hannover and another (which many people do as their daily commute), you'll generally hop on to one of the B roads around the city and then hop back in to the city where you want to. The speed limits on these ro
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1. Not all cities are built around the US model with honking great raised freeways running crisscross around them. "Old" cities that pre-date cars by any significant margin often have poor/slow traffic flow. Here's an example of where this car would be good:
http://www.citycoolcab.in/images/mumbai_traffic.jpg [citycoolcab.in]
2. North america isn't the only viable market in the world.
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North america isn't the only viable market in the world.
True, but it is a rather significant one.
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Most big cities aren't in North America.
In fact, in a list of the 50 biggest cities in the world, [worldatlas.com] the only ones in North America are Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto.
Portland and Seattle are nice places but they don't even rank in the top 100 in terms of population, and certainly not in density.
The American pattern of suburban living and 40-minute freeway commuting is not at all representative of the global market, which is much, much bigger.
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Contrary PDX perspective (Score:2)
Speaking as a full time Portlander, I emphatically disagree. The hills here might be a problem. The speed? You would just have to put some thought into which streets to use. Thought that any of the many folks already buying vehicles at ecomotion [eco-motion.com] is engaging in already. I live in inner southeast, where traffic calming measures can be found on about thirty percent of streets and where traffic is generally pretty light. Would this work on Macadam or MLK? Probably not.
Today.
But it's worth remembering that vehic
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Where I live, we use Butane gas for cooking. Each house has its own portable gas tank, when it's empty we bring it back to the sales point and get a new one. Those tanks are then refilled and re-sold/lent and so far I still have to hear any story about any of those breaking up, or exploding when falling down or during a road crash.
Of course, I don't know how old those bottles can get but if it's safe enough for cooking gas, I guess it should be safe enough for air
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Where I live, we use Butane gas for cooking.
In Bhutan? :)
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Close, if you just check the distance to the equator.
Offtopic : Cooking with gas > cooking with electricity. You have a better and more direct control of the heat produced.
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I don't have much knowledge of physics or engineering, so I might be completely wrong, but it looks to me as if some of the compressor methods described here [wikipedia.org] would be well suited for alternative energies. Basically, the compression seems to be the result of rotating elements, so one could imagine a dam or windmills creating compressed air directly, without transforming the energy to electrici