Saturday, February 24, 2007

Air Car

How cool is this? It is a prototype car whos idea is similar to the Chevy Volt or the similar Volvo consept where you use a moter running at a consistant rate to keep a battery charged. But, those cars rely on Lithium Ion batteries to hold electrisity that in turn runs an electric motor. Those batteries are expensive and toxic to make, wear out, and are hard to get rid of.

This idea changes things up by useing compressed air instead of electrisity and carbon-fiber storage tanks instead of batteries. The prototype is just the tanks, but in this video they talk about adding an engine air compresser (how about a bio-desel) to keep the tanks topped off. Or, plug it in at night to run an onboard air compresser that takes 3 hours and $2 in electrisity to run. Or re-fill it at a station in three minutes.

This seems at least like a hidrogen killer to me. Hydrogen is the most worthless of any of the alt fules out there. Its a made up idea that sounds good, but will always be 50 years away, while we are buying gas the whole time. There is zero infrasture for it and bulding one would cost billions. It is also low energy yeald and now one car costs one million to produce. But compressed air? Thats easy.

So check out the video and thanks as usual to AutoBlogGreen


1 comment:

Bjorn Watland said...

Not to mention, you'd be driving a Hindenberg around with a H car.