This souped up looking BABE of a car runs on Compressed air! So why is it only available in other c

[truedelphi]

Our local paper "The Record Bee' (LAke COunty CA) had an editorial in which the editor ranted about the fact that the countries producing the "Compressed Air" car, The E-volution, are foreign countries.

The car runs on, GET THIS! compressed air. Not a single drop of petroleum products. And no bio-fuels either. A-I-R!

The car is named the E-volution (the hyphen is part of the name.)

It is amazing that we are not doing this here.

The vehicles are being made in France and in So Africa.

France is planning to make sure that there are compressed air refuel stations across the nation, found at the gas stations.

Filling up your tanks of compressed air will get you a 120 miles worth or road travel. Though it sounds like they are planning on that number increasing dramatically soon. One article I read said it can travel 120 Km on the filled up air tanks - so it may be that the lower mileage figure is from reporters not doing the conversion properly of Km to miles.

Mexico is about to build several compressed air car factories.


Anyway the editor was ranting on how it is the other nations doing this and NOT US!
And except for this article, I have not seen a word of this in our corporate controlled media.

Here is one URL complete with snazzy photo (Sorry, but you'll have to cut and paste)

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/988265.stm

New edit 12:09 Pm Sat.
http://tinyurl.com/2w4zs9

This URL is more current than the BBC link

[gateley]

1. This is exciting! At first hybrids were touted as being "the future" - now so many

technologies have been introduced that hybrids may be a mere blip on the screen.

[truedelphi]

4. Although I confess a weakness for the Prius, that whole notion of hybrids always made me ill

Especially the notion of Hydrogen cell autos - much more polluting probably than oil based cars.

But in the corporate mind, it kept us tied in to the production and control of something they had that we would have to pay for.

Georgie Boy always give subsidies to the Hydrogen cell technology - so that also made it clear that it was the work of the devil.

But this Compressed Air thing sounds wonderful.

[alfredo]

6. Is the hydrogen extracted from gasoline? That's what I think bush

was pushing.

[truedelphi]

7. His choice was the most expensive cell to develop

And I do think that the way the hydrogen was isolated made it part of the non renewable
fuel choices.

But what else can we expect of our little Georgie Pie??

[alfredo]

10. He always sides with the poisons and profiteers.

[robinlynne]

42. Expect ethanol, as we just got via the new bill, because Jeb Bush owns the company.

(the only ethanol importing company)

[truedelphi]

60. That's not good news. As if we don't have enough corn.

Are you sure you mean importing as opposed to exporting?

[robinlynne]

61. importing from brasil. It is ridiculously expensive to make it from corn.

[robinlynne]

62. We will make a lot too, but if the motive were really to help the planet, electric

cars would be the answer, not ethanol.

[truedelphi]

65. Ethanol came about in a logical way AT FIRST

Farmers realized that this crop that was far too abundant could be added as ethanol to the gasoline.

They liked the idea of that and so even back in the 1980's this was going on.

In Brazil, the tractors that work on the farms use ethanol only - whereas here our vehicles use gasoline mixed with the corn product.

And the lobbyists have gotten into the mix.

Corn has always been so abundant in the USA that foolishness arises.

In the early to mid 1800's, corn was so prevalent here that people were encouraged to drink whiskey all day long. What is now our morning 11Am coffee break was the mandatory "elevenses" (Just saying it suggests one needs a drink!) The employer was expected to provide your whiskey for the break, as well as whiskey with lunch. About the only time the American populace forswore whiskey was on SUnday mornings, when everyone remained clean and sober long enough to get through Church!

Nowadays corn is so prevalent that the corn lobby has gotten it set up with corn syrup to replace sugar in many things. Despite the fact that corn syrup requires two and a half times the amount of water to liberate from the body, as opposed to sugar.

Critics of this practice warned back in the mid 1980's that diabetes rates would soar, which is what we are seeing right now.

And some of us long for the old formulas - I easily bypass the Coke and Pepsi aisles in the supermarket as I don't care for the muddy taste - but I imagine I'd start indulging tomorrow if they put the real deal, sugar, back in the mix.

[Trailrider1951]

40. No, hydrogen is made from H2O, water, but it takes electricity to

separate the molecule into its component atoms. It is not free energy, as it takes energy to make it. Now, that's your science lesson for today!:dunce:

[alfredo]

46. Here's someone taking hydrogen from gasoline.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002106.html It seems that this was what bush was pushing. This method gives the hydrogen people think they want, and keeps us dependent on bush's friends in Saudi Arabia.

[krispos42]

63. It can be make from water...

but it's cheaper to make it from natural gas.

Remember, where does the juice come from to electrify the water?

Power plants! That burn coal and natural gas, for the most part...


You see the problem.

[FogerRox]

54. No, from water, if oil wasnt running out, there would no need for

a hydrogen car....... oil would be plentiful. Major #1 problem is the 1st law of thermodynamics. You will use electrcity to split water into H2 & Oxygen. Why not feed the electricity into an electric car, far more efficient.

[alfredo]

58. Bush's "Freedom Car." Hydrogen from fossil fuels scam.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/05/ma_375_01.html



The hydrogen is then recombined with oxygen in fuel cells, where it releases electrons that drive an electric motor in a car. What Bush didn't reveal in his nationwide address, however, is that his administration has been working quietly to ensure that the system used to produce hydrogen will be as fossil fuel-dependent -- and potentially as dirty -- as the one that fuels today's SUVs. According to the administration's National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90 percent of all hydrogen will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels -- in a process using energy generated by burning oil, coal, and natural gas. The remaining 10 percent will be cracked from water using nuclear energy.

[gateley]

15. I'm in agreement with everything you've said! nt

[gilpo]

5. How 'bout a compressed air/electric hybrid....

That would be pretty awesome.

[truedelphi]

66. My last comment remark # 59, lists a slew of alternative cars, and I imagine that one of them does

[krispos42]

64. Ultracapacitors will enable practical all-electric cars

In terms of energy density, existing commercial supercapacitors range around 0.5 to 10 Wh/kg, with the standardized cells available from Maxwell Technologies rated at 6 Wh/kg. Experimental supercapacitors from the MIT LEES project have demonstrated densities of 30 Wh/kg and appear to be scalable to 60 Wh/kg in the short term,<4> while EEStor claims their examples will offer capacities on the order of 200 to 300 Wh/kg. For comparison, a conventional lead-acid battery is typically 30 to 40 Wh/kg, modern lithium-ion batteries are about 120 Wh/kg, and in an automobile applications gasoline has a net calorific value (NCV) of around 12,000 Wh/kg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitor

An ultracap might only have tenth to a half that of a modern lithium-ion rechargable battery, but because there is no chemical reaction limiting discharge and recharge power flow, they can be fully recharged in minutes, not hours. Pull into a 'gas station', stick a charging cable in your car, and wait 10 minutes while 300 volts at 1,000 amps pours into your ultracap stack.

If they get 300 Wh/kg, which is 2.5 times a lithium-ion battery, your car might have a range of 300 miles on a charge. Now, if you had some solar cells and/or a wind turbine on your home to charge up the car in supplement to the conventional power grid, then you'd really have something.

The problem is replacing gasoline is that it is incredibly energy-dense, easy to transport, easy to store, and easy to replenish in your car.

A car can run 400 miles or more on maybe 100 pounds of fuel. I know my beater can. If I had a Civic or Focuc, I'd probably get 550 miles. That's not too bad, considering six or eight hundred pounds of lithium-ion battery probably wouldn't get you more than 150 or so.

It's not just an oil-company conspiracy, yanno.

[Mist]

2. This is the pic from the article:

This one seems to be painted as a mini-cab.

[BeFree]

3. Finally

And you could use a windmill, solar electric, or a foot pump to fill 'er up.

Oh wait, how will they tax the fuel? Gotta have those taxes.

[BrotherBuzz]

13. A foot pump?

:rofl:

A windmill is a cool approach if you like in a windy clip. The neat thing about air is it is easily stored, and with the right engineering, there is virtually no limit to how much air can be stored.

[NickB79]

8. At the plant I work at, we've been instituting energy-saving policies

And one of those is strict control over wasteful use of compressed air. The "energy supervisor" stated that compressing air using electrical pumps has only a 10% efficiency. Ouch.

If that is true, a battery system might still be more efficient that an air-powered car.

[truedelphi]

12. Can you explain that? SO what is the cost of the air compression?

And the mechanism by which it occurs?

[NickB79]

16. The plant is spending over $25,000 per month on electricity

And at the meeting, the point was made that almost half of that was from our use of air compressors, since compressed air is used in most of our equipment. Apparently, cutting our compressed air usage by 10% could save us thousands of dollars a month.

When I look at electric vs compressed-air cars, I see it like this. They're both obtaining energy from the same sources (the electrical grid). With a battery-powered car, you simply plug it in and charge. Some energy will be lost from the heat generated by charging the battery. With a compressed-air car, you have to use electricity to run the air compressor and pressurize air before filling the "tank", and then also deal with heat loss as well. It just seems like there is an extra, unnecessary step involved in the transfer of energy with a compressed-air car.

Of course, the wildcard is how much energy it takes to manufacture the batteries needed for an electric car. That might offset the greater efficiency of the electric car, if they have to use energy-intensive batteries.

[bluerum]

25. It takes energy (work) to compress any gas. Google the ideal gas law: pv=nrt

[Tesha]

43. Compressing air makes it very hot.

> And the mechanism by which it occurs?

Compressing air makes it very hot. Unless you can retain
that heat, you lose a fair amount of the energy that you
just pushed into the compressed air. It's difficult to
store that highly-compressed air in the first place; it's
that much harder to store it *AND* keep it hot.

This is a basic thermodynamic problem that any "compressed
air car" must overcome. At the "compressed air" factory,
there are things you can do with the otherwise-wasted
heat, but it's still not an ideal situation.

Tesha

[gateley]

18. I know Biden introduced - and got passed - a bill to fund lithium ion battery

research which, although it's not the be-all, end-all, would be a BIG step on getting our cars off of oil.

I THINK he was given a ride in a Tesla Roadster and I've wondered if that was the incentive behind his bill. That would sure convince me!



Edit to add link: http://www.teslamotors.com/

[cureautismnow]

9. K & R

We desperately need more forward-thinking innovations like this to sever our dependence on foreign oil.

[truedelphi]

11. Thanks for the kick and r. n/t

[aquart]

14. How fast does it go?

[truedelphi]

21. Engines will top out at 50 Km an hour

I think that's 110 miles an hour.

Europeans need to go fast. With the exception of the Scandanavians.

[Mugu]

27. I think that you have the math backwards.

50Km per hour is 31.25 mph. Just look at the speedometer in your car 55mph is 88km per hour.

Regards, Mugu

[Esra Star]

30. 50 kmh is about 33 mph

The ratio is 5:8 i,e. 50mph = 80 kph

[truedelphi]

31. Sorry about that. It'sbeen twenty years since being in Europe

Thanks for pointing it out.

[NickB79]

17. Not to burst your bubble, but your link is from 2000

7 years have gone by, yet I haven't heard almost anything about this vehicle.

I hate to say it, but I think it might be dead.

[truedelphi]

20. I believe the link here regarding cars in India is more current

http://tinyurl.com/2w4zs9

[HughMoran]

34. This has been posted here a dozen times or so

It still strikes as something with potential in highly congested urban areas where "filling" stations could be numerous. There have been several drawbacks posted in the many other threads on this topic, but I can't remember anything specifically. Clearly it takes energy to compress the air, but since electricity can do it - it works well with alternative energy sources that focus on electrical generation. Compressing the air is not all that efficient though.

[LostInAnomie]

19. I bet it sounds like a bunch of little farts when it is running.

:+

[RC]

22. No mention of the pressure required in the tanks for this 120 mile range

Can't find anything in google for E-volution.

Something does not sound right. I'm having a problem with the energy required to move something 120 miles and packing enough compressed air on board to do it within a reasonable amount of time.

[truedelphi]

23. Here is a more up to date URL link: http://tinyurl.com/2w4zs9

The Engine
The core of the compressed air engine would be a single-piston engine powered by the expansion of compressed air. MDI's single fuel engines will run purely on compressed air and cars with these engines will top out at 50 kph . The dual fuel engine cars will have the capability to switch to a combustible fuel at speeds above 50 kph, and when on this mode the compressed air tank gets refueled too.

This link concerns building these cars for the Indian continent.

[TreasonousBastard]

28. 50 kph=31mph. And the thing has a range of...

125 to maybe 200 miles. (Not sure whether this includes it running on gas)

Another niche vehicle-- to be street legal in the US this thing is gonna need a lot of weight in safety equipment, and the auxiliary gas engine will have to meet polluiton standards.

It takes X kilowatts, joules, or whatever to move Y mass from here to there. The question is just what is the maximunm efficiency generating that amount of energy. Rankine cycle, Stirling cycle, electricity... there's lots of ways to do it, but you hacve to have the energy stored in some way in the vehicle. It can be stored as fuel, or some form of kinetic energy like flywheels or electricity. But, you eventually gotta come up with the energy to move what yer gonna move, no way outta that.

Right now, the densest energy storage we have for cars and tucks is diesel fuel. Running a compressor simply adds another step, and its wasted energy could wipe out any gains the compressed air might give.

[truedelphi]

24. BTW the cost of re-filling the air tank(s) would be about $ 3

[IDemo]

26. This is essentially an electric vehicle, with air tanks instead of batteries

I question whether these are ultimately anywhere close to the energy efficiency of a regular electric car using a battery & charger.

[HughMoran]

37. Good point

The biggest advantage I can see is that a tank full of compressed air is likely to be considerably lighter than a bank of batteries.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

44. I think the principle of its engine is similar to an internal combustion engine

An internal combustion engine essentially works on compressed air. In an internal combustion engine, air is mixed with gas and ignited and the explosion compresses the air inside the cylinder to force the piston to move. With an air car, the air is already compressed before it enters the cylinder and is carried in several long tubes of compressed air where the gas tank would normally be located. You don't have to haul around a fuel tank with 12 to 16 gallons of gas (which can weigh a lot). But I think the engine in an air car still has cyinders with pistons and needs oil to lubricate it even though it doesn't burn a gas-air mixture.

[IDemo]

51. I wasn't referring to the vehicle power plant, though I could have worded it better

The power source for both the air car and a regular battery-electric is ultimately electricity. I just question whether the conversion of electrical to mechanical energy involved with air compression to ~4500 psi can compare to the highly efficient battery charging systems now in use.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

53. Without the engine heat generated by burning gasoline

you might eventually be able to make the air car's engine out of lighter and ligher alloys, maybe even ceramics or plastics. You lighten the load of the engine, you increase the efficiency over a gasoline engine. You lighten the engine, you can then lighten the rest of the car and still maintain structural integrity. If every car on the road was extremely light and made of a collapsible material, they would also be safer if they strike you, as well as energy efficient. It might boil down to whether they can make a lightweight battery like a large, safe and stable lithium battery that can hold a big charge. I also look forward to the day when they have solar-powered generators that could either be charging extra sets of batteries or powering air compressors to compress extra air tubes all day at your home that you could then drop into your car and run on during the following day. If the electricity to compress the air in an air car or to charge the battery in a pure electric car comes from the burning of fossil fuel, we're still back at the days when we are burning gasoline, coal, or natural gas to power a vehicle and I think we need to try to get away from that.

[Mugu]

29. If the car is powered by compressed air,

I wonder about heat, AC, and lights.

Regards, Mugu

[OKIsItJustMe]

32. AutoblogGreen Q&A: Miguel Celades, sales manager of MDI (they make the Air Car)

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/06/09/autoblog-qanda-miguel-celades-sales-manager-of-mdi-they-make-th/

[sailor65]

33. It's already been evaluated here

the countries you see pursuing it are countries where there a few or no safety standards compared to what we use here.

The problem is energy density. This car is not practical because to store enough energy to make it useful, you must use very high pressures to store sufficient volume. High pressures means heavier storage vessels (Unless you're not after safety). Heavier storage vessels mean more energy must be stored. And so on.

The engineering solution would be to reduce or remove safety standards to make storage lighter (And, removing safety standards on the vehicle body itself to reduce weight.). Won't, and shouldn't, happen here.

And the car really only moves the pollution somewhere else. It takes a whole lot of electrical energy to compress air.

TANSTAAFL

[SergeyDovlatov]

35. so, air is used as a store of energy, but ...

... what is used to generate the energy. Last I check, most of the electric energy in the united states is still being generated with fossil fuels.

Irrespectively whether you use a battery or compressed air to store the energy, you still have a heavy carbon footprint close, if not more than an equivalent weight and power gasoline powered car due to efficency losses.

[truedelphi]

49. Well I envision a future wherein the hour

I spend on my rowing machine and the hour that husband spends on tread mill could be converted to power up something or other.

Then we compress the air using that human power and off we go with nary a carbon footprint.

In fact, the afternoon winds where I live could contribute also - in the summer we have gusts of forty and steady of fiteen knots an hour

In the winter we have even more volatile winds.

[SergeyDovlatov]

55. Sweet. Humanpower for the win!

Though I wonder... an hour on a treadmill, how much energy is produced? about 800kcal?
One gallon of gasoline is about 31000kcal. so it is about 38 hours of excercize. Let's say you have highly efficient car that does 38 miles per gallon.

So, excercising for one hour will allow your car to move one mile. Not bad!

[truedelphi]

56. I consider that where we are now w/ Regards to energy the equivalent of the wierd thing

That took off at Ktty Hawk.

Could that weird structure that was at Kitty Hawk have gone across the Atlantic? No, now way!

But on down the line, it came about pretty quickly. By the time of WWI we had airplanes up in the skies for hours shooting at each other. Wiht nary a thought that just over a decade earlier, they would have crashed pretty soon after take off.

It will evolve. With any luck at all, the first all out, thermonuclear war will be brought about by solar powered missiles!

[OKIsItJustMe]

36. Video from the Discovery Channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4

[hedgehog]

38. I would venture to guess that a tank of compressed air is more dangerous

than a tank of gasoline or hydrogen. It takes a lot of energy to compress air and an uncontrolled release can cause a lot of damage.

[ShaneGR]

39. Well, one of the main problems with the car is safety...

As far as I can tell, the car only goes about 35mph maximum and has a pretty short range. Aside from the range issues and the fact that you can't just stop and fill up your air conveniently yet, the cars couldn't be certified for highways or most roads because most SCOOTERS go faster and they're a nuisance to other drivers. Not to mention the size of the vehicles, I'd love to see a crash test of that little thing.

The other problem people arent thinking about is that a tank of compressed air is actually far more explosive in nature than a tank of gasoline. It takes a LOT of energy to compress the air in the tank, and a collision could result in a pretty big explosion depending on the size of the tank.

[Yukari Yakumo]

45. An added bonus.

When you start adding weight, it's range and max speed will go down. All things considered, this car may not be able to climb up a simple hill.

[Romulox]

41. There is no such thing as a free lunch; it takes energy to compress air...nt

[alfredo]

47. Run the compressor using solar, wind, geo thermal.

[Yukari Yakumo]

48. Not everywhere has a steafy supply of those

And Seattle comes right to mind.

[truedelphi]

50. You have a lot of hydrocarbon energy

And the Russians make energy from the waves of the ocean.

[alfredo]

57. then you will have to rely on the grid, or a hybrid.

[formercia]

52. Blowhard politicians

20 years at hard labor. Beans go in one end....

[truedelphi]

59. After googling the system for a while I found some other far out cars

The 'Aptera' - its designer says it gets 300 miles to the gallon

The three wheeler 'Zap Truck'

The 'Reva G Whiz'

The 'Elettria' - and Hey Captain, this one runs on the lithium crystals!

The 'Kewet Buddy'

The 'Piaggio'

[fascisthunter]

67. Same Reason Europe Get's Better Mileage from the Same Cars

we buy here.

Oil company and auto manufacturers colluding.

[MiniMe]

68. After reading your updated link, it seems it is still not on sale anywhere

So no surprise that it isn't on sale in the US. Sounds like another hybrid, it switches to gas over 50kph which is about 30 mph. Sounds like a great idea, but not many people will be going less than 50kph anywhere.