This seems like an eco-dream come true, a car the runs on air developed in India. I’ve seen stories on this since 2008, but have yet to see the car hit market. Now the claim is in August 2012.
I don’t think you’ll see IPCC chairman Rajenda Pachauri driving one of these though, since he has been prone to booking posh 5 star hotel suites and won’t even drive the electric car he has. And like an electric car, that energy to charge the air tank with compressed air has to come from someplace, and that someplace if you are connected to the grid is likely fossil fuels, nuclear, or perhaps hydro. Though, with no fuel taxes, it might be a hit with anti-tax crusaders. With a claimed top speed of 60mph and range 185 miles, it should be enough to overcome the range anxiety of electric cars, and there’s no worry about battery fires or having to replace the expensive battery pack in 2-4 years. Whether it will ever be seen in the USA will of course depend on its crash worthiness. And when there is a crash, will it do this?
Story submitted by George Lawson
What is this? ‘Alison Italo Aus’
Will it be the next big thing?
Tata Motors of India thinks so.
What will the Oil Companies do to stop it?
It is an auto engine that runs on air. That’s right; air not gas or diesel or electric but just the air around us. Take a look.
Tata Motors of India has scheduled the Air Car to hit Indian streets by August 2012
The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy N. For Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air to push its engine’s pistons and make the car go.
The Air Car, called the “Mini CAT” could cost around 365,757 rupees in India or $8,177 US.
The Mini CAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis, a body of fiberglass that is glued not welded and powered by compressed air. A Microprocessor is used to control all electrical functions of the car. One tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, turn signals and every other electrical device on the car. Which are not many.
The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power.
There are no keys, just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees per 100 KM, that’s about a tenth the cost of a car running on gas. It’s mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car, a factor which makes it a perfect choice for city motorists. The car has a top speed of 105 KM per hour or 60 mph and would have a range of around 300 km or 185 miles between refuels. Refilling the car will take place at adapted gas stations with special air compressors. A fill up will only take two to three minutes and costs approximately 100 rupees and the car will be ready to go another 300 kilometers.
This car can also be filled at home with it’s on board compressor. It will take 3-4 hours to refill the tank, but it can be done while you sleep.
Because there is no combustion engine, changing the 1 liter of vegetable oil is only necessary every 50,000 KM or 30,000 miles. Due to its simplicity, there is very little maintenance to be done on this car.
This Air Car almost sounds too good to be true. We’ll see in August 2012 if it is.
Is April coming early this year? A tank with enough pressure to go 185km? No way. I predict that in India people will charge it using their handy diesel generators which they need (and have) because of an unreliable grid. 1/10th the cost of gas to charge it? Any time there are two steps in an electro/mechanical system there is entropy loss of power. Solar to charge it is not cheaper than gasoline–the push for solar is based on it being low carbon, not cheap.
should be extremely inefficient.
Most of the energy used to compress the air is spent to heat the air (adiabatic compression). This energy is lost forever.
The price of 100 rupees per fill is low because electricity in India is too cheap.
A Luxfer T84A bottle masses 2.3 kg, and at 31 MPa (4500 psi) can hold 3.4 kg of air. At 14 cm diameter and 78 cm long, it’s not small, but it’s among the highest performance gas bottles available today.
The PV product (total energy) is 280,000 joules. at 30% efficiency in the air motor, that’s about 84 kJ, less than nine seconds of operating time for a 10 kW motor. Even if the microcar only needs 500 W to cruise, that’s less than three minutes of operation. Thenumbers just don’t add up.
@alex and @Doug
Please read what I just posted above. It is not an air expansion device. It is a thermal device. A great deal of the energy that appears to be lost in compression is regained but only when the pressure is high and retains its cooling ability when expanded (little shots of cold air akin to a diesel injector). If a flame was used to provide the gas that is aspirated into the cylinder, it maximises the cooling potential.
My stepfather wanted to use a diving cylinder to run a propeller to pull him along underwater but the efficiency and range were hopeless. I suggested he operate a model aircraft engine on the air – it would go much farther!
I have not heard what the efficiency of the French motor is. If it is slow, it may be much higher than a casual glance might suggest.
Crispin, the total energy in the bottle is limited by the pressure * volume product. It doesn’t matter how efficiently one uses that stored energy, there simply isn’t enough to be useful. All the handwaving in the world ain’t gonna make it work. No more discussion is needed.
Jeez guys, I like steam engines too, but I can also handle new technology. OK, it’s a toy car but a real car with a few more/bigger air tanks will work. In the 21st century, properly engineered things don’t spontaneously explode, leak or whatever.
@AlanG –
Exactly.
There are something like 12 million compressed natural gas cars in the world with tank pressures exactly in the same range as this. If anything the CNG tanks are more dangerous than compressed air, since there are two factors involved – pressure and ignition.
Given all the engineering – and ISO standards that already exist – the people here worrying about going Boom! basically don’t know what they are talking about. It took me all of 5 minutes, from a dead start, to find all sorts of online info about safety and compressed gas vehicles.
And as to there being enough available energy, again, the engineers and management at Tatra wouldn’t let the project get off the ground if it didn’t have enough energy. People are acting as if they pulled the number 168 mile range out of some tumbling lottery basket.
This thing either works or it doesn’t. We don’t have to wait till the year 2100 to find out if it gets falsified. August at the latest. Barring delays.
Since they already have over 3 million CNG vehicles in India and Pakistan, one has to think the compressed air vehicle will be a spin-off of that. So, the only question is: Does the engine have enough oomph. We can argue the costs here till the cows come home, and it won’t change any reality whatsoever. I doubt the cost claims, too. That electricity didn’t get made for free.
But this is one of those cases where we just have to be patient, pay attention, and see what happens. They aren’t going to read here that, “Oops! We left out safety and power!” and go tear down their assembly line based on our doubts. Every question we ask here has certainly been asked – and answered – if they have gotten this far with it. That is what engineers do, ask the tough questions and then go out and find real world solutions. This isn’t Phil Jones with his finger up his bum. Skeptical is good, but on a PRODUCT, the thing to do is to shut up and see if it works. We can doubt all we want, but if it is to the stage it has gotten to, someone obviously knows something we don’t.
If they ran it on nitrous oxide everyone would be happy.
Going all the way back to 2000 MDI of France has repeatedly announced that production of a compressed air car would start “next year”. Their website is mdi.lu .
aircars.tk is a good website for info on aircars. It is independently run and not affiliated with MDI.
As usual, production is scheduled to start ……. next year.
Despite calculations ‘” proving” that the air car cannot work to its specifications the fact remains that air locomotives and vehicles have used air as a motive power successfully, to a limited extent in the past.
‘Mechanical Movements, power devices and appliances”by G.D.Hiscox, M.E.(pub. 1911) lists two, a locomotive that used a large intermediate cylinder kept at the same pressure as the high pressure motor cylinder used (and presumably normalised temperature to ambient), and a low pressure motor cylinder that exhausted at near atmospheric pressure. Similar designs were used in mines for safety.
The other used air at 4000psi in bottles that was heated in coils by gas as a power factor for trucks.
Steam type injector devices can force atmospheric air into cylinders when filling, reducing the high pressure air needed. In a hundred years there should be SOME improvements in overall design.
Reblogged this on Building systems that WORK and commented:
Urban car 300 km or 185 miles between refuels for 2 USD
The compressed air in a fully charged scuba cylinder has, iirc, about the energy of 300g of TNT, or equivalently 2 hand grenades. I suspect the amount of compressed air in one of these car’s tanks is much, much greater. I wouldn’t want to be in one in a collision, nor in the vicinity of one.
And here is a picture of what a scuba cylinder can do when it fails:
http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/210339/8/Scuba-tank-explosion-raises-questions-among-divers
Notwithstanding the safety aspects and the 15-20 minute fill time ( heat must be controlled at all costs ), one thing must be considered.
IT TAKES MORE THAN NINE (9) UNITS OF ELECTRICITY TO GENERATE ONE (1) UNIT OF AIR ENERGY. Section 1, Page 28, Compressed Air System Solution Series, R. Scot Foss, 1993
STICK THAT IN YOUR ECO PIPE AND SMOKE IT!!!
That’s not a car; that’s a chicken coop.
Now speaking of cars; THIS here IS a car.
That’s what we need to be driving.
Hi Anthony,
I am from India and I have been hearing reports such as these for the past 2 years or so now primarily through forwarded emails. I have already seen these images around on the internet.
But, neither Tata Motors nor any other company in India has raised a flag about a compressed gas vehicle till now. So I thing an Aug 2012 release is highly unlikely!
Usually, before a car is launched into the Indian market, it starts circulating in the media with a lot of testing mule spy shots coming up. But no such thing has happened in India.
I personally think this whole compressed car thing is a rumor but would love to be proved wrong!
Our environment is going down pretty bad and something really needs to be done. Reminded of ‘the Unconventional Truth’ by Al Gore.
Some people need to think, and learn, before commenting. They detract from the credibility of WUWT.
Concerns about air tanks exploding are ignorant of the reality that they are riding around with several gallons or more of a volatile, easily-ignited liquid – gasoline, or a compressed flammable gas like propane or natural gas (in taxis and busses).
And note the contents of the air car energy tank is air, not an flammable/explosive fuel. The risk is rupture, a rapid release of pressure that could injure people by airflow or projectiles (pieces of the tank or other things dislodged by them or an air jet). But no substantial fire.