The Air Car Nears Completion

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."

it runs on "wind" power

[User 956 (568564)]

According to an article on Gizmag, Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has developed a car that runs on compressed air.

Well, if you eat a lot of Tandoori, this is a great use for that compressed air.

Danger...

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

Did half-life 2 teach us NOTHING about the dangers of compressed air cannisters?

Re:Danger...

[daves (23318)]

I thought it was "Jaws".

Re:Danger...

[DrLex (811382)]

Yes, it learns that in the future, the whole planet will be littered with them. Which makes sense, if this air car would be successful.
Following the same line of thought, there will also be a need for massive amounts of explosive barrels and crates with medkits.

Re:Danger...

[whoever57 (658626)]

I know your not being seriouse but I was wondering if air conisters would be as prone to explosions as a tank of oxygen. I could see a peirced tank shooting around from the force of the air leaving the tank, but I doubt it would explode.

Mythbusters did an episode on this and no, they could not get the tank to explode.

Mexico has had this

[Marxist Hacker 42 (638312)]

Mexico has been using this tech for several years now [electrifyingtimes.com], though this is a bit smaller than the taxi vans.

why?

[stim (732091)]

Initial plans are to produce 3,000 cars per year.

Is there a reason for that? That seems to be the way things like this go. We have a world changing invention thats super cheap and safe! We'll make a couple of 'em and see how it works out. . . Or maybe theres some validity to the theories that 'the powers that be' keep this kind of thing under wraps and prevent it from really taking off, because something like this could really upset the balance of power in the world currently.

Re:why?

[Mr. Roadkill (731328)]

Is there a reason for that? That seems to be the way things like this go. We have a world changing invention thats super cheap and safe! We'll make a couple of 'em and see how it works out. . . Or maybe theres some validity to the theories that 'the powers that be' keep this kind of thing under wraps and prevent it from really taking off, because something like this could really upset the balance of power in the world currently.

From an article mentioned by another poster, http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/guynegre.html [electrifyingtimes.com] :

Based on a new concept of local vehicle production and sales, MDI promote regional manufacturing license rights in the form of franchised turnkey factory systems. Such a turnkey factory will have a normal production capacity of 2000-4000 vehicles per year and will employ some 130 people. A model factory is being constructed in Brignoles, France.

My guess is that they don't have or can't raise the capital to take on the large manufacturers toe-to-toe, and are hoping their technology can get a toe-hold on places where local regulations for things like crash-safety won't kill a lightweight chassis and a fibreglass body... which sounds exactly like what they've done with the proof-of-concept fleet in Mexico and what they're doing through licencing the technology to Tata. Any idea what it costs to produce and certify a vehicle to meet European, US or Australian crash-safety standards? No, I don't know exactly how much either, but it has to be a lot. I'd imagine that it'd be relatively easy to build a vehicle like this that would be survivable if you flipped it - hell, the lack of weight would probably work in your favour. But cabin intrusion protection, in the event of some crazy SUV driver trying to occupy the same piece of road you do? That's hard enough to do with steel boxes smaller than another SUV, let alone something with something like this.

Re:why?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

And worse, it's not a very efficient process. Filling that tank will a. take a while and b. dissipate a lot of heat. Compressing air is not a good way to store energy.

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 ... everything it touches turns to a sheet of flame. And if one of those tanks were to fail, the resulting explosion would be substantial.

well...

[Chimera512 (910750)]

this looks like the ultimate in vaporware, an as yet unavailable vehicle and runs on "air" might as well run on magic aether or unicorn blood. you can't even see air. pfft.

Environmental considerations

[naoursla (99850)]

IC engines generate a lot of waste heat that can be used to warm the passenger compartment with little additional cost. On the other hand, IC vehicles need complicated a power hungry air conditioners to cool the passenger compartment during hot weather.

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

[el_gordo101 (643167)]

A heating system for a vehicle like this is going to be very expensive from a power consideration.

Just use a coal stove in the passenger compartment. Simple, really.

Wow

[Tired and Emotional (750842)]

2-3 hundred kilometres - that's long downslope.

Lack of good info

[TheAwfulTruth (325623)]

So.. it costs like 5-10$ to fill a single scuba tank. Where do they get their $1.50 figure from? There is no mention of how that figure is arrived at at all.

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

[registrations_suck (1075251)]

SCUBA air needs to be pure and clean. You pay extra for it for that reason if nothing else. Plus, SCUBA is an expensive hobby. You don't see many inner city youth taking it up as their hobby. Face it - divers tend to have money to burn, so of course they will pay more for their air (I'm a diver too by the way). Now, air for your car - hell, it can be any ole dirty air you want it to be. You're not going to be sucking it into your lungs at high pressure, so what difference does it make? Of course it will be cheaper than filling a SCUBA tank.

Some side-benefits...

[NerveGas (168686)]

    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.

[drinkypoo (153816)]

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.

How do they come up with the numbers

[lelitsch (31136)]

300 liters of 200 bar air has an energy content of about 35MJ or just about the same as 1 liter of gasoline. Even giving some credit for higher (perfect?) efficiency and some energy recovery through environmental heating, it seems to be a stretch to suggest that any reasonable useful car could run 2-300 miles on this. Actually, the energy content is probably a bit lower since they'll need some overpressure to run the engine (maybe 50 bar or so?). And I don't really want to be sitting in the car when they fill it. The heat generated by filling the tank is pretty much equivalent to burning a quart of gas in the trunk.
[humor]Yes, I am kidding, there are ways to alleviate the heat generation like compressing outside, slow filling,...[/humor]

The Air Car

[Kozar_The_Malignant (738483)]

Damn. I read that headline and thought my flying car was almost ready.

Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears...

[paeanblack (191171)]

Seriously, how many brilliant inventions have we heard of lately, and how many of those vanish just days after being announced?

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.

Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears...

[Chris Burke (6130)]

If you are going to play the paranoid lunatic, aim high. There is no market for half-assed tin-hattery.

But if there's a market for half-tinned ass-hattery, then I'm set!

Re:Countdown till said inventor disappears...

[NerveGas (168686)]

Brilliant ideas are a dime a dozen. Brilliant ideas which are economically and realistically feasable are a completely different story. Then, you have to match the person with the brilliant, feasable idea with someone who can make the business actually work. If you don't have all of those in place, it's a guaranteed failure.

Got your AFDB out yet?

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

Actually, there's no big conspiracy. Inventors are not disappearing. There are generally three reasons why you'll hear about it then nothing else:

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 /. will post very "first announcement" kind of things. The actual product is years or decades away from the market, and thus there's not a lot to be said.

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 /.'s rather short attention span (I mean really, how often are there good followups here?) and that's what you get.

So get some perspective, and save the aluminium for wrapping leftovers.

Re:Stupid

[DragonWriter (970822)]

The thing is there isn't just a lot of compressed air lying around. Thanks to thermodynamics, it costs more to compress the air than what we get out of it when we uncompress it. And it's probably oil or coal burning plants that compress the air. So this isn't solving anything.

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.

Re:I'm impressed

[hey! (33014)]

While I agree in principle, I'd be interested in the assumptions you used to reach that conclusion (e.g. how much energy it takes to move the machine a km).

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.