Compressed-Air Car Nears Trial

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."

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many jokes about old people and/or women and/or various ethnic groups being bad drivers. In these jokes, these people often drive slowly and forget to turn off their blinkers.

Re:Power from somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the web page the engine can work as a compressor and is just plugged in. Cost is about 0.50 to 1.50 Euro for 100km. 1.50 is around the price of a liter of gas over here.

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more advanced efforts. A car using a petrol motor to compress can give insane millage and estimated speeds of ~110kmh / ~70mph

This was aired on Australia television a few years back http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=J0KXrDpowJk

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[TheRaven64]

Yup, in the UK the speed limit is 30mph in built-up areas. There are a few bits where the speed limit is 50mph in bits of town that have major roads running through them, but if it can actually go at 28mph, then it's fast enough for in-town driving. You wouldn't want to drive it between cities though.

Re:It's a what now?

[Colin Smith]

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.
 

From TFA

[Noodles]

"Four other models, featuring speeds up to about 70 mph, are also on the drawing board."

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[$random_var]

It's taking a long time to change the actual layout of cities, but in the last decade or so there has been a lot of evidence that (in certain situations) decreasing the speed limit on city streets improves capacity. That's right, not just reducing traffic jams by making it less desirable to drive, but actually increasing capacity. Freeways have long been known to have their highest capacity when just about everybody is going just about 55 miles/hour. There are lots of complicated reasons for this, but one of the obvious ones is that when cars go faster, the size of the empty bubble around them increases, particularly when not all cars are going the same speed.

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.

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[westlake]

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.

.

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.

Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street.

[TheRaven64]

Not for road distances or for beer measures (although all other pub measures are in cl now).