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The compressed air vehicle is a new generation of vehicle that finally solves the motorist’s dilemma: how to drive and not pollute at a cost that is affordable!
The compressed air vehicle is built with the high performance Compressed Air Engine (CAE) technology developed by Formula One race car engineer Guy Nègre. This technology is proprietary and protected by over 40 patents to date. Nègre applied his years of knowledge and experience developing Formula One engines which start with a kick of compressed air to achieve this major first step towards his ultimate vision: enabling clean driving at any speed and for any distance, at a cost that makes it a reality for everyone.
Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008.
Old technology
It cannot be claimed that compressed air as an energy and locomotion vector is precisely recent technology. In fact at the end of the 19th century the first approximations to what could one day become a compressed air driven vehicle already existed, through the arrival of the first pneumatic locomotives. Yet even two centuries before in 1687 Dennis Papin of the Royal Society London, apparently came up with the idea of using compressed air (Royal Society London, 1687).
The first recorded compressed-air vehicle in France was built by the Frenchmen Andraud and Tessié of Motay in 1838. A car ran on a test track at Chaillot on July 9, 1840, and worked well.
This type of technology has been used since 1930s in cars and in Formula 1 as a start-up engine, as well as for the propulsion of torpedoes. While gasoline or diesel fuel tanks have the same amount of energy per litre of fuel from the first to the last litre, compressed air motors rely on the pressure within the tank, which decreases as air is drawn off. Because the air flows through a pressure regulator before going to the engine, no reduction in power would be noticed until the tank was nearly exhausted. This is the case for electric vehicles, too.
Also in the US
Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) will produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. ZPM will build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.
ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas).
Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 110 km/h and has a range of 201 km. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.
A six-seater for bigger families
Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT that seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.
Thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1610 km at up to 155 km/h with each tiny fill-up.
We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in north of 56 km/h, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process officials refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.
“I want to stress that these are estimates, and that we’ll know soon more precisely from our engineers,” ZPM spokesman Kevin Haydon said, “but a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 30.2 litres of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 1288 and 1600 km.”
The family-size, four-door CityCAT is now undergoing standard safety tests in Europe, then side-impact tests once it arrives in the States.
The Air Car will follow the same safety rules and regulations of all approved cars driven in the Unites States. According to engineers the car’s tubular body provides increased resistance in the event of a crash. The air tank(s), located under the floor, is carbon fiber with a thermoplastic lining. If damaged upon impact, it cracks and the air simply escapes without any explosion, as there is no metal. Aerospace giant Air Bus industries will manufacture the tanks for MDI.
The Air Car will come equipped with Air Bags and ABS braking.
Could it be that the CityCAT will be the first, nonelectric car we will be able to buy soon? Time will only tell.
The CityCAT, already being developed in India, will be available for U.S. production in three different four-door styles. But it’s the radical dual-energy engine, with a possible 1610 km range at 155 km/h, that could move the Air Car beyond dreams and into our garages.
Technology was developed by Formula One race car engineer Guy Nègre.
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