Compressed Air Vehicles

[MacUser]

Pure Driving: The Revolutionary Compressed Air Vehicle
http://zeropollutionmotors.us/

If you can, imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.

This is the expected performance of the revolutionary compressed air vehicle that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is introducing to North America. The vehicle is powered by the Compressed Air Engine (CAE) developed by Motor Development International (MDI), a 15-year old company based in Nice, France, and headed by inventor and Formula One race car engineer, Guy Negre.

[Poimen]

That's interesting! In fact, as a youth, probably about 15 years ago actually, I proposed the same basic concept. Of course , my rudimentary understanding could not conceive of the actual details and mechanics involved beyond generalizations.

I've found that every neat idea I've ever had someone else has already has. OR someone else soon has it also, and has the capital to act on.

[MacUser]

Poimen.
The real revolution will be when they can pump back the air as the vehicle runs. Then it could be the first perpetual vehicle that requires no fuel.

The sad truth is that they are constructed so light.. an Eighteen Wheeler Rig would literally blow it off the highway as it passed.

But an original concept none the less.

[Mike Vande]

The sad truth is that they are constructed so light.. an Eighteen Wheeler Rig would literally blow it off the highway as it passed.

1,874 lbs. doesn't sound like it would be too easily blown around.

[MacUser]

The sad truth is that they are constructed so light.. an Eighteen Wheeler Rig would literally blow it off the highway as it passed.

1,874 lbs. doesn't sound like it would be too easily blown around.

You are right. A 67 Beetle weights in at 1852 lbs. I never seen that weight figure... but I did see a Science Channel segment on this compressed car and they stated the entire body was made of ultralight carbon fiber and the guy literally picked up the entire body by himself and moved it around. You can't do a beetle body that way, trust me. I took one off once and it took 4 adult men to move it.

The designer stated it had to be super light because of the reduced power to weight to mileage ratio etc. So if the real models actually do weight 1,874 lbs.. the undercarriage has some serious bulk / engine weight to it... because the body is ultra light.

Interesting.

[Susie Hamilton]

When I first saw the thread topic, my first thot was that they finally created a car that ran on farts.

[TW]

It is an interesting technology to say the least. However, since the goal is to reduce the impact of carbon based fuels on the environment, is it currently a viable alternative? I don't believe so. At this time all you are doing is moving the carbon footprint from the car to the electrical generating plant. Unless you are lucky enough to use power from a "clean" source, i.e. wind, solar, hydro-electric; you haven't actually reduced that footprint at all. I did some research on this vehicle prior to posting. There are a couple of things that I found that raise red flags for me.
The first is, the air that drives these engines is stored in a tank onboard the vehicle at about 4800 lbs/sq.in..

The two-stroke engine is powered by compressed air stored in tanks at about 150 times the pressure of tyres on a car.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/3523/

That would make it a potential "bomb" in an accident. The second thing is that they will be manufactured in India.

After signing a mass-production agreement with India's largest auto manufacturer, Zero Pollution has announced the beginning of a marketing push into the U.S.A.

http://www.gizmag.com/compressed-air-ca ... 2010/8896/

This concerns me. As a Quality Control Technician I deal with parts that are produced "off shore" every day of the work week. I can tell you from first hand experience that ferrous metal parts (iron, and the various steels) produced in India are of extremely poor quality. The company that I work for has been, for the last four years, trying to get one of our cast parts produced in India. The potential savings if they can produce the parts would run in the millions. Four years and still not one good part. Not only are the parts dimensionally wrong, the metal itself has porosity (thousands of air bubbles in the metal). India at this time does not have the technology to produce high quality steel. This combined with the high pressures involved in the storage tank, in my opinion, is asking for fatalities should that tank rupture. I have seen what happens when a tank of compressed air fell over and sheared the valve off, that valve when through four concrete block walls before it stopped. that was at 2500 lbs of pressure, less than half what will be involved on the car. As I said, interesting technology, but there needs to be some improvements in some parallel technologies before this will have any measurable impact on the environment.


TW