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The Air Car Nears Completion
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Mar 19, 2007 05:42 PM
from the whatever-blows-yer-hair-back dept.
from the whatever-blows-yer-hair-back dept.
torok writes "According to an article on Gizmag, Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has developed a car that runs on compressed air. It costs less than $3 USD to fill a tank on which it can run for 200 to 300km. The car will cost about USD $7,300 and has a top speed of 68mph. About once every 50,000 km you have to change the oil (1 liter of vegetable oil). Initial plans are to produce 3,000 cars per year."
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Technology: Car Powered by Compressed Air 409 comments
gripperzipper writes "CNN reports that a Korean company created a small car powered by compressed air. ENERGINE created its PHEV, or Pneumatic-Hybrid Electric Vehicle, which uses a two-stroke compressed air engine for start, acceleration, and uphill climbs. The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 km/h (32-40 mi/h). Although major auto manufacturers have invested heavily in gasoline hybrids, it will be interesting to see if a market will open for this type of vehicle." Update: 04/04 17:18 GMT by T : Reader Tapsu spotted the incongruity here, writing "Interesting post, but the speed conversion has gone wrong way: "20-25 km/h
(32-40 mi/h)". ... Thus the correct speed range in miles would be
something like 12-15 mi/h."
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it runs on "wind" power (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if you eat a lot of Tandoori, this is a great use for that compressed air.
India (Score:5, Insightful)
The smog laws in America are almost pointless when you consider it's GLOBAL warming and India/Mexico are basically shitting into the atmosphere. If they can make this work
Parent
Re:India (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but I really would have thought the Dutch would have come up with this idea first. The Dutch have been powering their Ovens with compressed gas for years.
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Re:Dutch Ovens (Score:5, Informative)
I think the original poster meant this [wikipedia.org] particular usage of the term "Dutch Oven":
A practical joke involving flatulence underneath a blanket or cover inspired by the mechanics of the "Dutch Oven".
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Re:India (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:When Americans do that, it's "Outsourcing" (Score:5, Insightful)
And I suppose that you somehow think it's OK for you to make a general statement like this, but it's not OK for those in the US to make general statements about the French. Let's be perfectly clear here. Although the US avoids acting in ways that are contrary to its national interests, it frequently makes decisions and acts in ways that have no impact one way or the other on national interests -- just like pretty much any other country. The US has been, and continues to be very generous in many ways. Although some of that generosity has political aims, certainly not all of it does. I think you need to take a serious dose of your own medicine, lest you yourself be misconstrued as arrogant and ignorant. For what it's worth, I've heard pretty much the same joke come from the colleagues in England and Germany that I work with on a regular basis. Does that make it right? No, but it does show that US-bashing isn't the answer to the problem. Start at home and work your way outward.
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Re:India (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_co2_emi_per
If you look at SO2 and NOx emissions per populated area, the USA is MUCH MUCH better. Our CO2 emissions comes with less SO2 and NOx than almost any other nation! In short, yes we burn a lot of fossil fuels, but we burn it cleaner than anyone.
More to the point, fossil fuel usage, per capita, has been steady in the USA since 1976. We are not the primary source of change that is altering the planet for the last 30 years. We were already there 30 years ago!
Change is heaviest in countries that are industrializing like Mexico, India, and China. Obviously, addressing the scope of the problem would require major changes in all nations. Currently there does not seem to be ANY HOPE of preventing further increases in greenhouse gases as there is nothing on the table to prevent nations that are industrializing from continuing on that track. Any changes that could be made in the USA, Canada, and Western Europe (and Oz and Japan) would pale in comparison to the large increases coming from China and India. And short-sighted, when you consider that capping CO2 emissions will force a quarter-after-quarter recession on all involved nations. And ain't that a pretty picture to consider?
I, for one, welcome our new farting car overlords. They actually could help.
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Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
Following the same line of thought, there will also be a need for massive amounts of explosive barrels and crates with medkits.
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Informative)
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And yet they do explode (Score:5, Interesting)
-Jay-
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
Fine. Just as long as it leaves other OS'es alone.
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Informative)
The worst thing I can conceivably see happening with gasoline is the tank being punctured and leaking the gas, which then ignites. Or if you have a nearly empty tank of gas and roll a bunch before an ignition source is exposed to your now well-shook-up gasoline. In both of those cases, though, you'd be really fucked if you were in a fiber-glass car with a glued frame.
Cars don't explode like they do in the movies. Except maybe the Pinto. (A type of car that has an exploding gas tank, named after a bean that gives you gas...)
If you're driving a Pinto, my condolences.
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Re:Danger... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody was dancing with the Darwin Award.
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Mexico has had this (Score:5, Informative)
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
A gallon of gasoline contains about 131 megajoules of energy per U.S. gallon. Rather a terrifying amount of chemical energy, when you think about it. For example, the tank in my car holds about 18 gallons, which means there's roughly 2,358 megajoules of energy in it. However, there's no possibility of all that energy being released in an explosion. Only a fuel-air mixture can explode: liquid gasoline can burn at the interface but not explode. Even if your tank were nearly empty of liquid gasoline and was full of a critical mixture, the resulting explosion would be tiny compared to the total energy in a full tank.
That's not true for a tank full of compressed air. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a similarly-sized tank of compressed air with that much potential energy in it. My tank full of hydrocarbons is as safe as a helium balloon in comparison.
No thanks. I've seen what extremely high-pressure air can do when it gets out
Parent
well... (Score:5, Funny)
Environmental considerations (Score:5, Interesting)
The compressed air powered car operates the other way around. Compressed air cools as it decompresses. The exhaust from this vehicle is below zero Celcius. That cold air acts as free AC. A heating system for a vehicle like this is going to be very expensive from a power consideration.
If these vehicles are not a scam then I think we can expect their adoption only in warm climates. In cold weather, I would not be surprised if the decompressed air freezes the components that transfer power to the wheels.
Re:Environmental considerations (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Lack of good info (Score:5, Informative)
Running a two stage compressor for 3-4 hours will probably cost more than $1.50
And "Zero-pollution"? Can we have some truth in advertising please? Using the car causes pollution, plain and simple. Maybe it's 1/10th or maybe less of a petrol car but at least be honest about it and let us know exactly how much pollution it does cause. It's certainly not 0. Saying so leads to people assiming that this is some kind of crank.
Re:Lack of good info (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Lack of good info (Score:5, Interesting)
This is incorrect. SCUBA tanks are generally filled with plain old air, compressed to between 2500 and 3500 psi. The only thing special about the air is that it is dried and filtered -- dried so that the tanks don't rust and filtered because you don't want to breathe compressed crap that has settled out in the bottom over multiple fills.
Sometimes tanks are filled with other mixtures. One common recreational mixture is Nitrox, which is mostly regular air, but with some pure O2 added to increase the ratio of oxygen from its normal ~21% to a higher value, usually 32% or 36%. The reason for adding oxygen is to reduce tissue absorption of nitrogen, allowing for longer bottom times without risking the bends (though the higher oxygen ratio limits depth due to oxygen toxicity).
In technical diving, tanks are filled with mixtures of pure gases, rather than air. Helium is used to replace nitrogen, either entirely, making "heliox" or partially, making "trimix". Gas ratios are precisely tuned for the dive profile. Deep mixes use small amounts of O2, to avoid oxygen toxicity, and more helium, to reduce nitrogen absorption and minimize nitrogen narcosis. Shallower "deco" bottles may use all sorts of mixes depending on the decompression technique being used and indeed divers often breathe from two or more bottles during a single decompression stop in order to maximize the rate at which they safely offgas their absorbed inert gas load. For example, it's common for technical divers to breathe from bottles of pure O2 for short periods even at depths which would normally cause severe toxicity because doing so accelerates the offgassing of nitrogen.
Getting back to the question at hand, it does not cost $5-$10 to fill a SCUBA tank with compressed air, anywhere in the world. You may well *pay* that much, but that's not what it costs. Dive shops are small scale operations with enormous overhead, so they mark everything up by huge amounts, including air and gas fills. Were a typical shop's compressor to be run on an industrial scale, fills would be at least an order of magnitude cheaper. Take out the requirement for filtering (though drying is probably still a good idea) and it should cost even less.
Parent
Some side-benefits... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this actually comes into being, there are some really neat side-benefits of this sort of thing. Principally, as compressed air is not only easy to generate, it can be generated *AND* stored locally. That means that it can be done via "renewable" energy (solar and wind) *as they are available*.
As electricity is easy to generate locally - but not easy to store in sufficient quantity - you can't really have solar panels that will always be available to charge your electric car. However, you *can* have solar panels which fill your compressed-air tank, and then refill your can whenever you need.
Overall, that means a completely petroleum-free energy source for cars. Even if you don't believe that man is behind global warming, the thought of removing most of the automotive-produced pollution has got to be an appealing thought, with the idea of never paying a utility company (gas OR electric) to refuel your can again as a nice bonus.
Summary is seriously incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
You know, I'm starting to get the idea that it really WOULD kill the editors to actually edit something. This is of course proof that the Firehose cannot make up for the failings of idiot editors.
Now, if there were no links in TFA, then torok would have an excuse for not knowing that this vehicle was actually developed by Moteur Developpment International, or MDI [theaircar.com]. If you visit their site you can read MDI's press release about their deal with Tata [theaircar.com]. But in fact not only the technology but the entire vehicle was designed by MDI. Not only have they been using them in Mexico (Mexico City is the most polluted city on the planet) but they've been using them for some years in Spain.
Shame on you torok, and shame on you ScuttleMonkey. The former for falsely attributing the vehicle and technology to the undeserving; the latter for not doing his job and checking the story for validity.
Crash Testing (Score:4, Insightful)
How do they come up with the numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
[humor]Yes, I am kidding, there are ways to alleviate the heat generation like compressing outside, slow filling,...[/humor]
The Air Car (Score:5, Funny)
Flat tire? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears... (Score:5, Funny)
What about the far greater number of brillant inventions that vanish before we ever hear about them in the first place?!?!
If you are going to play the paranoid lunatic, aim high. There is no market for half-assed tin-hattery.
Parent
Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears... (Score:5, Funny)
But if there's a market for half-tinned ass-hattery, then I'm set!
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Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You forgot one (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is ethanol so popular these days as an alternative fuel as opposed to other green fuel solutions? Ethanol is only a small (albeit a significant) step away from oil, yet it's being touted as the fuel that will save the planet. It's because corn farmers have a huge presence in DC. They saw an opportunity to increase the worth of their crop, and they jumped to get legislatures' attention. Don't ever underestimate the power of lobbying.
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Re:You forgot one (Score:5, Funny)
How about this? [uspto.gov]
You just need to find a way to harness the cat's kinetic energy in a usable form.
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That's not the case here (Score:4, Interesting)
The best thing about this car is that air-conditioning is very easy and costs no energy. As the air decompresses in the engine, it cools off. Directing that air into the cabin would provide air-conditioning with just about no effort.
Parent
Re:That's not the case here (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a 40 gallon air compressor in my garage (and a set of pneumatic tools to go with them). I could install some solar panels on my roof and a small air compressor in my garage, attaching it to the 40 gallon tank.
It wouldn't recover pressure like the 1.5 HP electric motor, but who cares? I'm gone most of the day, so the solar panels can do a "trickle charge" on the air tank. If the car's range is 200km (~124 miles) that's actually a week's worth of mileage for me! It can take all week to build up the required pressure, and I can fall back on the electric motor for a quick recharge or if I'm using the pneumatic tools.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re:That's not the case here (Score:5, Insightful)
Fossil fuels _ARE_ extremely energy dense and thus good for cars. But if we could loslessly transmit that energy from a big honking power plant to vehicles, it wouldn't "shift the polution", it'd OVERALL REDUCE IT. A fixed-speed generation engine with millions of users to spread load out and cost-effective pollution scrubbing is going to put out a lot less crap into the air then the equivilant number of small, badly maintained, stop and go vehicles.
Just because our current power generation comes from badly maintained coal plants doesn't mean it HAS to be that way. There are a lot of benefits to efficiences of scale.
Parent
Got your AFDB out yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) It's all hype, no substance. There are plenty of inventors that try to hype things to get capital that they really have no idea how to make work. Sometimes they are even out and out frauds.
2) The product is a long way off. Often
3) The product doesn't do as well as expected. Some things sound really cool and then just don't pan out. They go to market and flop.
Take any one of those and combine it with
So get some perspective, and save the aluminium for wrapping leftovers.
Parent
Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, and it's a good idea to embiggen your vocabulary at the same time.
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Re:Uranus alone could provide much of the needed g (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, yeah, it is.
Burning fossil fuels in a power plant is generally more efficient and cleaner than burning them in a small, light mobile engine. So it reduces pollution that way.
While compressed air isn't the only such storage medium that turns the vehicle-power problem into a large-scale generation problem, batteries and fuel cells are far from clean to produce. Compressed air canisters aren't nearly as dirty. And, its a lot easier to build a distributed compressed-air generating infrastructure powered by large-scale power plants than it is for hydrogen.
Its not solving everything, but if it performs as advertised, it certainly is a useful part of the solution.
Parent
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
For the forseeable future we (the US) will be getting 55-60% of our electricity off of coal and 20% off of nuclear power. This electrical power can, with this compressed air model, be used to power the whole transportation sector, instead of oil. The US is the "middle east of coal". That means more US money staying in the US, less money being pumped into a volitale part of the world that doesn't like us much, more US jobs, more US oversight of the involved companies. As an American this benefits us greatly. It benefits all Americans except for the CEOs of the top 5 or so oil companies. (This applies elsewhere too, but America has the most cars, generates the most pollution from them, and all in all is the biggest oil consumer; though China is close, maybe surpassed the US in the past year or so.)
Additionally one would assume that the air compressors would be run off of electric motors, which allows them to use electricity produced anyway they want. If you wanted to use solar panels at home and plug the car into a small compressor to recharge that would work. If you wanted to goto a service station and buy their compressed air, that would work too. Unlike hydrogen, air compressing equipment is already widespread, hydrogen production isn't there yet. Either way, you're right in that we get less out than we put in, but the transision from oil to will be like that. We are very very unlikely to find something else we can pump out of the ground and use as easily as oil.
We are now transisioning permantly from a primary portable fuel (oil) to a secondary (compressed air, hydrogen, batteries, etc). It seems that these next fuel(s) will be with us for atleast the 100+ years oil has been.
Parent
Re:I'm impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
The amount of energy needed to move a person that far is not that much. An average cyclist can produce something like 3watts/kg. A 75kg cyclist produces something like 225 watts; assuming he can travel at about 20km/h, we can put a lower bound on the energy needed to move a typical person 200km at 2250 watt hours.
Let's assume we have an engine that is as efficient as the rider (for setting the lower bound) and weighs as much as the rider. Lets suppose that we need twice the energy to move engine and rider the 200km. So we need 4500KWh.
Assuming that electricity costs $0.10/KWh, then such a machine would consume forty five cents to move a person 200km.
To put it in perspective then, the claim is that this car can move a person from place to place using only fourteen times the energy a reasonably fit cyclist would use.
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Re:I'm impressed (Score:5, Informative)
Congratulations! You just calculated how much energy you need to lift the car to an altitude of 250 km (!)
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Re:I'm impressed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Air (Score:5, Funny)
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