Just an awesome article...I've been searching for an article on the Air Car that truly understands the possibilities and the enormous opportunity we have with the Air Car. We can't allow this to slip by us. We have to force it on our politicians.

If the efficiency and range of the compressed air engine is questionable for some people, just imagine a solar / air hybrid or and electric / air hybrid.

Wow, this sounds promising... Granted, Jim the Bobber, electricity would be optimal in terms of efficiency, but a 3 minute refuel time really wins over batteries in practical terms. (heck, why not explore airpower-hybrid electric too) Additionally I would think gas station owners would jump to add air pumps to their station. Their markup on gas is like $.05 per gallon. Conversely, they would receive all the revenue from their own air, made by their own equipment. (Power could optionally come from the grid, solar panels, wind turbines, etc.) Of course, if car owners could plug their cars in over-night that would eat up some of the service station's profits... anyway... Economists, engineers - get together on this will ya!

If you convert air pressure to hydraulic power you gain energy.
A one hp compressor will produce 4 cubic feet per minute of air at 100 psi

An air cylinder 10 inches in diameter and 12 inch stroke is 942 cubic inches
4 cubic feet of air equals ( 4*1728) 6912 cubic inches.
6912 cubic inches of air will push 6912 cubic inches of hydraulic fluid
at 100 psi. 6912 cubic inches divided by 231 equals 29.9 gallons
Gallons times pressure divided by 1714 equals hydraulic horse power
29.9 gallons times 100 psi divided by 1714 equals 1.745 horse power.

if that is the case the hydraulic motor will run a compressor that will
produce 6.9 cu ft per minute at 100 psi.
Where is that extra 2.9 cfm coming from.
Can we start with 100 psi and run a hydraulic motor increasing the
amount of air produced along the way?
Where did I go wrong?

I believe we all know that we don't get sumthin for nuthin. The compressed air motor will indeed shift the burden to the electric grid but we'll be upgrading that too over time. The move to wind, solar, geothermal and other "green" sources of electrical generation will happen and will eventually replace all of the hyrdocarbon hogs that we have today. We'll be seeing more nuclear power plants in the near future too as the continued rising price of oil will silence the NIMBY (not in my back yard) folks. We will see a mixture of technologies and it will take all of them. All of the trasnportation advances will in one way or another be tied to our electrical grid. No one technology can or will solve the world's need for alternative energy sources in transportation or otherwise.

One point that has not been mentioned in all of the posts I have read all over the web and that I'd like to throw out there now relates to the world's ability to transition to new technologies without suffering dire economic consequences. Can we rush into developing an infrastructure to support non-fossil fuel alternatives and maintain good economic equilibrium? It is almost a paradox because the very thing that threatens to kill us is also what keeps us alive for now. Like it or not, fossil fuels and the world economy are inseperable right now and a mad rush to change it could hurt us more than help us in the short term economically. Just like most others, I would like to see the shift happen soon but how soon is too soon and how fast is too fast? Yes, it is going to happen. It must happen! But maybe we should take some time to think about when to do it and how to do it right. One thing for sure, we'll be waiting until well after the election in November before anybody in politics takes a crack at that one. And then, it won't be their idea it will be ours. The world's scientists and the world's economists need to work together on this one.

Investment opportunity is not like importing the vehicle, Geoffrey McClelland, the company does have a investment opportunity but it requires you purchasing rights to manufacture the vehicle such that India did and that also means for changes you have to purchase the engines separately from them as they are not actually the maker of the vehicle or the air engines which they themselves import. This factor drives your overhead up and your selling franchise must coordinate with theirs.

If you wanted to get a new option available it would mean you becoming a drop shipper having to pay their shipping costs up front to your customer. In this way they are certain to sell as few as ten engines up to 100 engines at a time and ship once.

They will not give a investor rights to manufacture their engines so if you want a stationary engine operation and it be for making electricity your out of luck. Their engines are patented with the vehicle they sell. I would suspect India paid dearly to be able to manufacture their vehicles.

If your getting second thoughts about air engines, you have a right to consider something with a better flair. Look closely, the engine only uses air to intake then compresses to add it to the already compressed air supply wihout consideration of a cooling system. We know what trouble this could mean down the road with warping and moisture control following a on/off situation of useage so think about a new option without their company being involved. Look towards a mix of water and air to compress with the supply instead using a impeller to inject the solution at the moment of compresssion so that a massive compression results using the pressurized water also as a coolant so to extract the result which becomes hot over use and add just a small amount of electricity to make it a steam so you can generate electricity and have in wheel hub electric motors. Now that is what I call a hybrid from the ground up without using a ICE for propoulsion at all and is still a zero emission vehicle. I am addressing this to all the readers especially all those whom want to create a new business option for American Consumer's. Grab your drafting equipment box and get that drafting table dusted off so to create the very best water/air compressor engine and thats the future as I see it for the idea to make a better vehicle do not invest in carbon fiber fabrication which drives the overhead up. Waferized fiberglass shells with some spider steel woven parts would make it cheaper and very little steel excepting for the bumper supports and mainframe unless you use aluminum beam structuring found in most concept vehicles. Water tight your construction and you got a winner.

The air car concept suffers from the low energy content of compressed air. MDI the "aircar" company has never demonstrated a vehicle capable of traveling more than a few miles, the reason is the enormous amount of air needed to travel more than that. If you are able to follow the energy through the air car system from compression to the final expansion to power the vehicle you can readily see the capabilities to travel more than a few miles is not there.
The reason is enormous amounts of energy is needed to compress the air, large amounts of energy is lost due to the cooling necessary during the compression stage, if the air is not cooled during compression, the pressure will drop substantially after compression and you would not be fully utilizing the capacity of the air tank. Then as the air is expanded to a pressure at which you would power the engine, more energy is lost from the expansion, the lower pressure air will be cooler, more energy lost.
The real truth is evident when you look at the capacity of the air tank, there are scientific tables that will show how much energy is contained in a air under various pressures, you will see that the amount of energy is the fully loaded air tank is a fraction of what is necessary to obtain the performance that is claimed by the promoters of the air car. There is no free energy, you need a certain amount of energy to move a vehicle a specific distance, there is no free energy.
IF the air car was even close to being capable of obtaining the performance claimed, the promoters could approach any venture capitalist and receive whatever money was necessary to bring their concept to fruition. Instead we get claims going back to the year 2000 saying that production is NEXT year in such and such a place (MEXICO, SOUTH AFRICA, etc) nothing ever comes of such claims.
The promoters of the air car use the public's ignorance of science (Thermodynamics specifically) and their inherent desire for cheap energy to gain free publicity from the press, to sell more "Franchises".
If the air car was ready for production in 2000, what is the delay? The truth is you will never see an air car capable of being more than a golf cart, or warehouse vehicle. Do research on the company and their claims going back 10 years and you will find a pattern of lies, and scientific impossibilities and claims that border on perpetual motion, ask yourself at what point do I simply refuse to believe any more of the unproven claims?
The truth is in the details that nobody takes time to investigate, Outrageous claims garners free publicity, which is how they advertise the sale of their "Franchises", in a few years you will read about this as another scam that many fell for, I believe the air car only offers a dream to those who do not understand.
Tata motors in India released a statement last year that said they have no production plans.
Tata itself only made one reference to the air car prior to that point in which they said that Tata "envisages further development and refinement of the technology", MDI took that statement and said they would be producing cars in Fall 2008, then summer 2009, again lies.
Air engines have been around since 1850, they were used only for short transportation runs and in coal mines where explosive gases existed, they were always close to their air sources due to the low energy capacity of air.
The faulty logic and unproven claims by MDI the promoters must be taken into account when analyzing the entire concept, you can not overlook their history of obfuscation and lies.
MDI's plans to have many factories producing 10,000 or so cars per year flies right in the face of economics, is there economy of scale or not? That works out to 40 cars per working day, what happened to shifts, utilization of capital goods, maximization of profits etc?. They have this business plan as a means to sell more franchises, many factories, means many down payments, means more money up front from more people = cash...the reason behind it all.

I like the innovation of the compressed air car, as it also filters the air and would have applications in polluted areas. I like the electric vehicle idea. I have designed an electric vehicle, low cost with multiple affordable motors. Built along the idea of the Segway bullet proof with double systems. The Model T ran 50 mph with 20 hp. We can do much better today. K.I.S. keep it simple.

im so for changing the planet. Im researching air cars and they are really great for just running on air. thank you for your time helping us!

I don't have any appropriate training to assess the viability of an aircar -- but I do like the concept. The problem regarding power plants using fossil fuels isn't going away any time soon, true. But I'm for all green alternatives though each has some problem, such as no wind/sunshine, storagte, limited performance, etc.

A system as you describe will not work due to the fact that at some point the pressure in both tanks would be equal and the flow would stop.

Look at at the current vehicle touted by MDI on their site, I suppose this is proof that you can not operate a normal sized vehicle for any sort of range. Hence we have a "thing" whose output is less than 5 hp and weighs less than 500 lbs. I would call it an overcomplicated golf cart.
If they could make a decent vehicle they would have by now, who would develop a contraption such as that "thing" when the market is for CARS

Hi,
I am not an engineer but I would like to give the following answer to the people here who call the project a scam and say the technology just can't work. Tata motors' engineers spent 31 months investigating thoroughly MDI and its technology, and thenTata decided to pay 30 million $ for the licence for India only. This can only mean that they found the technology and the company to be sound. Their engineers are still to this day collaborating closely with MDI's folks on improving the air engine. Also MDI has signed an agreement with two European airlines, Dutch KLM and French Air France. They will test the Airpod for 6 months starting within some weeks. So we will very soon know more about the range and other claims. I am as curious as you are. As soon as anything more is known, you will find it on the "news" page of my site http://www.aircars.tk

Jeff Sherry -- you should try with another computer. www.aircars.tk has been working each time I've checked over the last few days.

Didier: You say that you believe MDI's claims because Tata Motors has invested, and because there will be trials of the AirPod by Air France and KLM Engineering. MDI has been at this same state of "homologation in two months sales starting soon after" several times over the last 10 years.

At how long of a delay of the homologation; Tata Motors release of a vehicle; information released on the performance of the Air Pod at Air France; and demonstration of range can there be and you still believe in MDI's claims. 6 months? 1 year? 5 years? Are you willing to wait another 10 years before you doubt MDI's claims?

At what point do you accept that MDI is continuing the same stalling game they have done since 1999?

MDI can prove that they are real by completing any one of the above listed items. So far time after time they have missed their own self-imposed deadlines. I would be delighted if MDI were to do a public demonstration tomorrow of the range of the AirPod and prove me wrong. I'm betting that they won't.

Yoat Mon -- I'd be interested in seeing your calculations. Compressed air hold a bit less energy per kg than does a lead acid battery -- perhaps a bit more kw-hr/kg than lead acid battery if the tanks are very lightweight carbon fiber. The downfall is that air engines have not been very efficient.

There is no physical reason why one cannot make a compressed air car. The problem is that the energy density of compressed air and low efficiency of air motors combine to make it a very difficult engineering task to get usable operating range.

The advantage of compressed air is fast recharge and a high number of charge/discharge cycles.

I wish MDI would take what they do have and go find an application where their technology is suitable. Then they would have a base to get real world experience and further develop their technology. The little AirPod being used to run repair techs around the tarmac of an airport might be such an application. MDI was supposed to start such a trial with 7 prototype AirPods at KLM Engineering and Air France in Spring 2009. Hopefully they will at some point actually deliver AirPods to Air France/KLM. Not yet, though.

I am an ex-nuclear engineer turned financial advisor. It seems I am a little late to the conversation but I'll throw in my two sense anyway. Solar power on top of cars is essential, it doesn't matter if the car is being driven in Seattle or San Diego. The amount of energy provided by the sun is infinite really, we just need to capture it. The power from the sun is then directed to the cars battery. Other energy sources would also be directed to the battery such as braking heat and the energy from wind as suggested earlier. Now those who argue they wind power on a car is a wash are both right and wrong. The only time it would be beneficial is when going downhill. The wind turbine would be positioned so that it is not creating extra drag while level or tilted uphill but would be exposed when going downhill generating some power. Not a ton but every little bit helps. The battery could also be charged at home or in charging stations. Bottom line is the battery has to be able to hold large amounts of KW's and charge from various methods. The battery would then run an air compressor. All cars would have their own, highway recharging stations sounds preposterous to me. A high pressure air compressor is relatively quite and doesn’t require that much energy when done in numerous stages. Think gear ratios. The compressor obviously charges air banks which discharge to the air turbine and power the car. Also the intake for the compressor should be at the discharge of the turbine creating the biggest differential pressure for the turbine and the highest pressure intake for the compressor maximizing efficiency. The other option is to change out the air compressor with an electrolysis machine and the air banks for desalinized highly pure water. Everyone’s scared of carrying hydrogen around. Why has no one just put an electrolysis machine in a car and made hydrogen on the spot? It’s easier to transport and store water then hydrogen. Either of these options seem like the best option to me, and of course the battery charging from external sources should be made up of as much alternative energy as possible. Even if it is charged using coal and oil plants at least the pollution is contained. The biggest problem with any solution is that big oil usually buys out the idea that will put them out of business.

all last at compressor. how to compress air ,i always think about it

As I have been pointing out for almost 2 years now, this will not get off the ground! Tata has made fools of themselves and their engineers on this one!
The power and infrastructure, cost and distance it is touted to be able to travel are all based on bad science. It is dead in the water so to speak!

For several years I followed the evolutions on the "air car" from a certain distance. I was enthusiast, this technology should really help change the world. But, because the promised launch dates for this car have been postponed year after year, and because of the promotional video's contained more and more "scientific nonsense", I recently put the whole thing in question. Being an engineer myself, I made some calculations on what I expect being the toughest points to develop this car: create sufficient reach. The energy stored in the 300l reservoirs in these cars at 30 Mpascal is 54Mj. From this we have to deduct the unusable energy that remains in the reservoir when its pressure comes below the motor pressure (=22MJ when motor pressure =10 bar (my estimate)). So, usable energy is 32Mj. This corresponds with the energy of 0,9 l diesel. A small diesel car with good aerodynamic design (with a typical 30% motor efficiency) can drive 25km with this energy. Suppose Guy Negre's 2 stage expansion motor has in very very best case an efficiency of 60% (I estimate max. 40%), than his car has a reach of 50 km. This is much lower than 300 km that is promised. It is clear that the whole "air car" story gets fully stuck at this point.

Or Guy Negre and his engineers are very low level engineers, or they found a nice way to fill the pockets?

The astounding paradigm shift required but not likely to occur in the U.S.A. before their dollar melt-down is a shift to alternate fuels! China has strong-armed nuclear/electric powered, electric bullet train networks and their associated infrastructures, resulting in a civilization dependent on nuclear power not oil, and producing goods for world markets more cheaply than the Americans possibly can! Smaller compressed air cars would be a nice addition for short hops , to the Amazing Chinese system currently up and running and surpassing the American "rubber wheeled gasoline guzzlers, McMansions, strip molls, in the suburbs" paradigm.

Adding to my previous post on this subject. It is also possible to put flat plate solar panels on the rood of the vehicle. This is hot water heating technology which can help to keep the insulated heat storage tank hot. It would also help keep the vehicle cooler. A piston compressor/expansion engine would not need a transmission because it is can run from a standstill efficiently.

I am still hoping for these cars to become part of our reality and I am sure sooner or later they will. The technology has never let me down so far, it's only a matter of time until gas cars will be removed from circulation and replaced by electric cars, air powered cars or even water powered cars. I am already making plans for a new electric vehicle, I've put my old vehicle on an automobile donation list, there are people out there that would be happy to use it.

Ragged Chutes, Cobalt Ontario, Canada furnished compressed air form water flow to power the mining tools underground there for years. For those who claim secondary power neede, this bridges that claim neatly.

Jeez, I'd never thought that a wbsite with "science" in its name could attract so many... "science challenged" (heh, heh...) commentators.
And, while at it, so many authors so freely mixing their idees fixes with reality...

"I had a dream!" - True, only visionaries can change the world - but even they cannot float upstream, modify a constant, or win an argument with IRS, can they?

BTW: I can't seem to get ANY html tags working - neither "cite" nor "blockquoe", not even "i" [italics] seems to have any effect on the tagged text - so in order to differentiate between quoted text and my comments I have to resort to "====" placed just before and after the quoted text. Also, I'm not a native English speaker - so please excuse (?) occasional foreign language pattern slipping through.

Anyway, back to that, heh heh, hot & compressed air issue. ;-)

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It is important to realize that the way we power our vehicles today is based on the legacy of energy discoveries of the 1800s.
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Jeez, just think of it... and we are STILL using iron (as steel and cast iron) which was used first time... quite some time ago as well. Such a ...backwardness? Or is it just a matter of "right tool for the job"?
In case of gasoline and diesel fuel: the best energy density with most developed technology for utilizing it and minimum technical problems. In short: efficiency and convenience. Do they count as valid reasons?

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Today we are using the energy source discovered 150 years ago to get us to work and to the grocery store. Do we use candles to light our homes? Do we use tubes to power our radios and TVs? Do we cool our houses with blocks of ice? No, no and no! So why do we continue to blindly define transportation energy on an 150 year old discovery that we know is causing climate change, funding terrorism and is in finite supply?
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Oh, c'mon... This is just rubbish.
Yes, we do use oil for our space heaters. We do use electricity to heat our food and water (when electricity was first "technologically employed", never mind "discovered"?). We cool our homes with machines that use the same "physics and principles" that those ice-making machines. Yes, some high-end amplifiers still use "vacuum valves" (the "rest" switched to transistors because of size, price, weight and energy efficiency issues). We still use candles "to lit our homes", even if only for "romantic dinner for two" (or a sunbsequent "bath for two", or whatever else "for two"). Incadescent bulbs are just somehow more efficient and have higher light output then candles, although they do use the very same principle to emit light (ditto for halogen lights). So called "compact fluorescent bulbs", when one calculates TCO (purchasing cost and total power usage during its lifespan, which is nothing like claimed 6 or 8 thousands hours - more like 2-4 thousand in typical use) are in fact not that "cost efficient" - and the "quality" of the light they give is, well, infamous. Plus, they do contain mercury vapours, ald "other stuff". LED lights are still pretty much in R&D phase, still quite far from mainstream use. But I digress here.

If a change did take place in any of abovementionef fields, it happened not because somebody "believed in it", but because the new technology was simply more efficient and/or more convenient and/or cleaner and/or cheaper... (you get the idea, d'ya?)

NONE of this is happening as far as "alternative transport solutions" are concerned. They all suffer from either shorter milleage, technical "overheads", lesser "energy density storage" problems, and so on - be it a CNG, LPG, electricity (either in "classical" storage or in supercapacitors), hydrogen internal combustion/ hydrogen cells - you name it.
(I live in Poland, where LPG-converted cars are very popular, and where some cars, mainly city buses, are converted to run on CNG, so I have some "field experience" in this area.)

The moment the current technological obstacles get solved (like, cheap super-supercapacitors or REALLY effective and fast-charging LiFePO4 cells, for example), the change will take off. Until then it is just a pie in the sky.

And about that "we KNOW [it] is causing climate CHANGE" - hey, what happened to "global warming"? Is it "passe"? Or, perhaps, "not really proven, so we better stick to safer «climate change» alternative"? ;-)
(Never mind, it's just my sense of humour.)

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In the last few decades, Western Science has, as it has penetrated ever smaller particles, come to the conclusion that everything is energy. Taking a look at energy from this point of view it strikes me as incredibly narrow to think of fuel, or energy as fossil fuel. That is just a small slice of what is available. If everything is energy then let’s look elsewhere, everywhere.
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It is NOT about "what's available", but what's "portable" - it is, in other words, all about "best fitting" (USABILITY) of given technology for a given purpose.
Small, short-distance and light-load vehicles (like golf carts or electric wheelchairs) are electric-powered. "Regular" cars are powered with gasoline engines (mostly, with exception for Europe, where 1 gallon of gasoline costs, on average, well above 7 dollars!) - again, it is matter of best technology available for particular purpose. Big trucks, railway engines and ships are powered by engines running on diesel fuel - again, energy efficiency gains offset the technical "overheads" of much heavier and much more costly engines (both in terms of manufacturing and maintenance; again, not so in Europe, where one can find compact "city" cars, like Citroen Clio or VW golf equipped with diesel engines.)

In short: we all have heard about "nuclear powered icebreakers" or "nuclear submarines" Guess, why we never heard of "nuclear powered rail engines"?

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There are people around the world who are doing just that. A French company called MDI has partnered with an Indian company Tata Motors, to bring to market a car that runs on compressed air. That’s right, air. The power source is air and the waste product is air. A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, Guy Negre, the founder of MDI, has developed a compressed air engine that has the potential for being one of the great inventions of this century.
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Nope, wrong on both counts.
Compressed air engine was invented in XIX century (just take a quick look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_engine).
And while one do can say that "power source" ("medium" would be more accurate) is indeed, the air, and the "waste product" is just an expanded air, one has to admit that there is some pollution in the equation - pollution that made the compressed air available in the first place.

Besides: compressed air does store energy, as does (uncompressed) gasoline. The latter stores it as "chemical" energy, the former as "pure physical" energy ("potential" energy, as it is properly called).
Now, guess what happens when compressed air tank ruptures? Let's say, without going into detais, that the picture won't be pretty. And knowing "general technical culture of India" firsthand I can reassure you that it is just a matter of time that it is going to happen - not once, not twice, but on "disturbingly regular basis" (wanna bet?)

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Negres’s compressed air car can travel 120 miles between refueling. That is significant because more than 50% of Americans live 20 miles or less from work, and the average daily mileage per car is less than 40 miles a day.
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Notwithstanding the doubts about the actual mileage, one has to keep in mind that "personal transport" (that is, commuting to work/ school or grocery store) is just a tiny fraction of ALL "energy expenditure for transporting goods and people" - transporting all kinds of goods across America, from Washington to California, from New York to Houston, by trucks or by rail, just can't be done on compressed air cars (I take your statement regarding this issue for granted).

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The cost to operate is low, about one dollar per hundred miles. The compressed air only car will need to go to compressed air fueling stations for a compressed air refill. Once these retrofitted gas stations are in place, a refueling will take 3 minutes, will cost about $2 and will allow the driver to drive 125-175 before needing to refuel. Alternatively, there are engines being developed that either switch over to electric or gas power allowing the car to continue to be driven, while at the same time operating the compressor to refill the tank with compressed air.
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While the first part of the above statment is either "un-based assumptions" or just "wishfull thinking" (I'm not going to decide which), the second part is just... well, a "domestic refuse", if you will.
Why on Earth one should waste the fuel to to operate compressor to compress air, and then use the compressed air to power the vehicle, while EACH and EVERY "energy conversion" step ALWAYS involves some energy loss? (And this is not even going into issues like water vapour condensation, heat generated during air compression, moisture in "on board" compressed air that might result in ice blockage - and so on.)

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This model car could be driven from L.A. to New York on a single tank of gas. Because there is no heat generating combustion in the engine, changing the oil, vegetable oil at that, needs to be done only once every 30,000 miles.
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Duh.
And because there's no heat generated in the engine, there's no way to heat up the interior of the car on the long winter trip from New York to, say, Portland - eh? (Internal combustion engine cars use for this purpose waste heat of the combustion. India, generally speaking, has, for most of the year and for most of its area, a climate, where cooling, not heating of the car's interior is required. Remember, expanding air cools - beneficient effect IN INDIA, maybe in California/ Arizona/ Texas during the summer. But what about the northern states?)
Besides, as I just said, expanding air COOLS down (and this very effect is used to liquify the air, but I think you know it very well yourself) - and cooling the compressed air in the tank means a pressure drop, which in turn means... lower "fuel" efficiency? What would then be the "air-mileage" of such car on a long winter trip, From New York to Portland, at about zero Farenheit?

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What is not to like about this? Cars that are pollution free,
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They are not - as others have already said, compressed air is NOT a natural resource. We've got to compress it first. Using some other source of energy, most likely electricity. From some power plant, possibly coal- or gas fired. Means, CO2 emission.
Duh.

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basically petroleum free, low cost to purchase [estimates are less than $20,000], low cost to operate and capable of handling most of our driving needs. Sure if you want to pull a boat or rumble around in a big SUV or pick up this vehicle is not for you, but for commuting and running errands, the overwhelming amount of vehicular use in the U.S., the compressed air car is just fine.
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Nope - the "overwhelming amount of vehicular use in the U.S.", in TERMS OF ENERGY USED, is NOT a "commuting and running errands".

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What the compressed air car points to is the fact that humanity has the technological capability of solving our energy problems as they relate to transportation.
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Commuting and running errands is NOT the major "transportation" (again, in terms of energy usage).

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Combined with the coming electric cars in the next few years, it is possible that by 2020 we could primarily be free of our reliance on the internal combustion engine. Now that is the potential and clear possibility.
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The issue is not about "possibility", it is about "viability" and "feasibility". And about "cost efficiency" - and other pesky issues like that.

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Do we have the social and political fortitude to make this a reality? Will our government see the clear opportunity or will it succumb to historical habit and inertia and cave to the well funded industry lobbying efforts that have influenced energy and transportation policy for the last 100 years?
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Oh, c'mon... Conspiracy theories 2.0, huh?
America, as far as I know, was built, among other principles, on free competition. Which means, that every individual with bright new ideas is free to pursue new inventions (yeah, I know, oxymoron) and is free to sell them to the public.
True, the estabilished bussineses will try (as they always did) to protect their own interests - and that's why railways lost to the horse carriage makers, car makers lost to railways tycoons, and airplane manufacturers and operators never really, err... took off - all because of the influence of combined rail- and carmakers lobbying (and don't forget the horse breeders!)
Ditto for AC - because of well-estabilished DC power suppliers (and because of Edison's personal efforts) AC distribution grid never really had a chance to prove its viability. Such a pity...

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The presidential candidates in 2008 could campaign on an “Energy Independence by 2015” platform, calling for government supported mass production of electric cars, compressed air cars and basically create a nation-wide Apollo project for the replacement of the internal combustion engine in a decade. The technology is soon to be in place, so it is up to us, all of us, to make utilize the compressed air car and all such emerging new technologies to make it a reality.
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Oh well... But this would require the Congress to pass some resolutions changing some basic physics and maths, y'know... U think "yes, we can" ? (to "do it"... sure, we can, can't we? ;-)

BTW: it's 2012 now... Just THREE yrs left to your "2015" goal... ;-)

Best,
KW