http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/106040/Air-Cars:-A-New-Wind-for-America's-Roads?
Air Cars: A New Wind for America's Roads?
by Jim Ostroff
Thursday, October 30, 2008
A new carmaker has a plan for cheap, environmentally friendly cars to be built all over the country
An air-powered car? It may be available sooner than you think at a price tag that will hardly be a budget buster. The vehicle may not run like a speed racer on back road highways, but developer Zero Pollution Motors is betting consumers will be willing to fork over $20,000 for a vehicle that can motor around all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.
The expertise needed to build a compressed air car, or CAV, is not rocket science, either. Years-old, off-the-shelf technology uses compressed air to drive old-fashioned car engine pistons instead of combusting gas or diesel fuel to create a burst of air to do the same thing. Indian carmaker Tata has no qualms about the technology. It has already bought the rights to make the car for the huge Indian market.
The air car can tool along at a top speed of 35 mph for some 60 miles or so on a tank of compressed air, a sufficient distance for 80% of consumers to commute to work and back and complete daily chores.
On highways, the CAV can cruise at interstate speeds for nearly 800 miles with a small motor that compresses outside air to keep the tank filled. The motor isn't finicky about fuel. It will burn gasoline or diesel as well as biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil.
This car leaves the highest-mpg vehicles you can buy right now in the dust. Even if it used only regular gasoline, the air car would average 106 mpg, more than double today's fuel sipping champ, the Toyota Prius. The air tank also can be refilled when it's not in use by being plugged into a wall socket and recharged with electricity as the motor compresses air.
Automakers aren't quite ready yet to gear up huge assembly line operations churning out air cars or set up glitzy dealer showrooms where you can ooh and aah over the color or style. But the vehicles will be built in factories that will make up to 8,000 vehicles a year, likely starting in 2011, and be sold directly to consumers.
There will be plants in nearly every state, based on the number of drivers in the state. California will have as many as 17 air car manufacturing plants, and there'll be around 12 in Florida, eight in New York, four in Georgia, while two in Connecticut will serve that state and Rhode Island.
The technology goes back decades, but is coming together courtesy of two converging forces. First, new laws are likely to be enacted in a few years that will limit carbon dioxide emissions and force automakers to develop ultra-high mileage cars and those that emit minuscule amounts of or no gases linked with global warming. Plug-in electric hybrids will slash these emissions, but they'll be pricey at around $40,000 each and require some changes in infrastructure -- such as widespread recharge stations -- to be practical. Fuel cells that burn hydrogen to produce only water vapor still face daunting technical challenges.
Second, the relatively high cost of gas has expedited the air car's development. Yes, pump prices have plunged since July from record levels, but remain way higher than just a few years ago and continue to take a bite out of disposable income. Refiners will face carbon emission restraints, too, and steeply higher costs will be passed along at the pump.
Zero Pollution Motors doesn't plan to produce the cars in the U.S. Instead, it plans to charge $15 million for the rights to the technology, a fully built turnkey auto assembly plant, tools, machinery, training and rights to use trademarks.
The CAV has a big hurdle: proving it can pass federal crash tests. Shiva Vencat, president and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, says he's not worried. "The requirements can be modeled [on a computer] before anything is built and adjusted to ensure that the cars will pass" the crash tests. Vencat also is a vice president of MDI Inc., a French company that developed the air car.
The inventor of this technology is Mr. Guy Negre, who is the founder and CEO of MDI SA, a company headquartered in Luxembourg with its R and D in Nice, France.
Showing posts with label Air Car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Air Car. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4251491.html
Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range
By Matt Sullivan
Published on: February 22, 2008
The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.
Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.
And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.
We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in north of 35 mph, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process officials refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.
“I want to stress that these are estimates, and that we’ll know soon more precisely from our engineers,” ZPM spokesman Kevin Haydon told PM, “but a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gal. of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles.”
Those figures would make the Air Car, along with Aptera’s Typ-1 and Tesla’s Roadster, a favorite among early entrants for the Automotive X Prize, for which MDI and ZPM have already signed up. But with the family-size, four-door CityCAT undergoing standard safety tests in Europe, then side-impact tests once it arrives in the States, could it be the first 100-mpg, nonelectric car you can actually buy?
Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range
By Matt Sullivan
Published on: February 22, 2008
The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.
Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.
And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.
We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in north of 35 mph, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process officials refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.
“I want to stress that these are estimates, and that we’ll know soon more precisely from our engineers,” ZPM spokesman Kevin Haydon told PM, “but a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gal. of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles.”
Those figures would make the Air Car, along with Aptera’s Typ-1 and Tesla’s Roadster, a favorite among early entrants for the Automotive X Prize, for which MDI and ZPM have already signed up. But with the family-size, four-door CityCAT undergoing standard safety tests in Europe, then side-impact tests once it arrives in the States, could it be the first 100-mpg, nonelectric car you can actually buy?
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The promise of air-powered cars
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/ecogeek/236/the-promise-of-air-powered-cars.html
The promise of air-powered cars
By Hank Green
Fri Jan 4, 2008
More than 10 years ago, a French Formula One expert had an idea: Instead of running cars on the chemical energy of gasoline, why not run them on the physical energy of compressed air?
Now that vision is extremely close to becoming reality.
Prototypes of the "air car" are already on the road, and several companies have licensed the technology. According to a BBC report, the first air-powered cars could roll off the production line later this year, for sale in India and Europe.
The cars are powered by plain old air, which is compressed in ultra-strong tanks. The air is then released through a couple of pistons in the engine, which drive the wheels. Current prototypes get a bit more than 1 horsepower, and can push the cars up to 70 mph for about 120 miles.
It's not in any way comparable to something you might go and buy on a dealer's lot today. But there are some significant advantages.
For one thing, it costs only about $3.00 to fill up the tank.
For another, the car has no emissions. In fact, the air coming out is significantly cleaner than the air in most cities.
Of course, it will take some electricity (from coal power plants, yes) to compress the air, but the carbon savings are still very significant.
The refilling process is simple and quick, assuming your gas station has been retrofitted with ultra-high-pressure air compressors. Several companies, most of them fairly small, have licensed the technology to produce the vehicles. One very large company, Tata Motors (India's largest carmaker), has plans to produce air cars, and has released several designs of upcoming models.
Tata is planning on creating a hybrid version that uses compressed air for driving at low speeds, and then switches over to gasoline if the driver needs a speed (or range) boost.
As for a U.S. release, we're going to have to wait a little longer.
Though the technology has been licensed here, it might be a while before the cars can match up to the safety regulations of the United States - or the voluminous desires of American consumers.
But for the rest of the globe, especially for emerging markets that need cheap transportation, this could be a fantastic alternative that truly makes the world a much cleaner place than it would otherwise be.
The promise of air-powered cars
By Hank Green
Fri Jan 4, 2008
More than 10 years ago, a French Formula One expert had an idea: Instead of running cars on the chemical energy of gasoline, why not run them on the physical energy of compressed air?
Now that vision is extremely close to becoming reality.
Prototypes of the "air car" are already on the road, and several companies have licensed the technology. According to a BBC report, the first air-powered cars could roll off the production line later this year, for sale in India and Europe.
The cars are powered by plain old air, which is compressed in ultra-strong tanks. The air is then released through a couple of pistons in the engine, which drive the wheels. Current prototypes get a bit more than 1 horsepower, and can push the cars up to 70 mph for about 120 miles.
It's not in any way comparable to something you might go and buy on a dealer's lot today. But there are some significant advantages.
For one thing, it costs only about $3.00 to fill up the tank.
For another, the car has no emissions. In fact, the air coming out is significantly cleaner than the air in most cities.
Of course, it will take some electricity (from coal power plants, yes) to compress the air, but the carbon savings are still very significant.
The refilling process is simple and quick, assuming your gas station has been retrofitted with ultra-high-pressure air compressors. Several companies, most of them fairly small, have licensed the technology to produce the vehicles. One very large company, Tata Motors (India's largest carmaker), has plans to produce air cars, and has released several designs of upcoming models.
Tata is planning on creating a hybrid version that uses compressed air for driving at low speeds, and then switches over to gasoline if the driver needs a speed (or range) boost.
As for a U.S. release, we're going to have to wait a little longer.
Though the technology has been licensed here, it might be a while before the cars can match up to the safety regulations of the United States - or the voluminous desires of American consumers.
But for the rest of the globe, especially for emerging markets that need cheap transportation, this could be a fantastic alternative that truly makes the world a much cleaner place than it would otherwise be.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Air-Car Ready for Mass Production
http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/315
Air-Car Ready for Mass Production
The world's first commercial compressed air-powered vehicle is rolling towards the production line. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre, will be built by India's largest automaker, Tata Motors.
The Air Car uses compressed air to push its engine's pistons. It is anticipated that approximately 6000 Air Cars will be cruising the streets of India by 2008. If the manufacturers have no surprises up their exhaust pipes the car will be practical and reasonably priced. The CityCat model will clock out at 68 mph with a driving range of 125 miles.
Refueling is simple and will only take a few minutes. That is, if you live nearby a gas station with custom air compressor units. The cost of a fill up is approximately $2.00. If a driver doesn't have access to a compressor station, they will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car's built-in compressor to refill the tank in about 4 hours.
The compressed air technology is basically just a way of storing electrical energy without the need for costly, heavy, and occasionally toxic batteries. So, in a sense, this is an electric car. It just doesn't have an electric motor.
But don't let anyone tell you this is an "emissions free" vehicle. Sure, the only thing coming out of the tailpipe is air. But, chances are, fossil fuels were burned to create the electricity. In India, that mostly means coal. But the carbon emissions per mile of these things still far outdoes any gasoline car on the market.
Unfortunately, the streets of North America may never see the Air Car, though; it's light-weight, glued-together fiberglass construction might not do so well in our crash tests. However, that does not mean the Air car is confined to the sub-continent. Nègre has signed deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.
And this isn't the last we'll hear of the technology. The folks making the Air Car are already working on a hybrid version that would use an on-board, gasoline-powered compressor to refill the air tanks when they run low. Negre says that technology could easily squeeze a cross country trip out of one tank of gasoline.
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