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Compressed-air car

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For other uses, see Compressed-air car (disambiguation).

The Air car is a car currently being developed and, eventually, manufactured by Moteur Developpement International (MDI), founded by the French inventor Guy Nègre. It will be sold by this company too, as well as by ZevCat, a US company, based in California.

The air car is powered by an air engine, specifically tailored for the car. The used air engine is being manufactured by CQFD Air solution, a company closely linked to MDI.

The engine is powered by compressed air, stored in a carbon-fiber tank at 4500 psi. The engine has injection similar to normal engines, but uses special crankshafts and pistons, which remain at top dead center for about 70% of the engine's cycle; this allows more power to be developed in the engine.

Though some consider the car to be pollution-free, it must be taken into acount that the tanks are recharged using electric (or gasoline) compressors, resulting in some pollution, if the electricity used to operate the compressors comes from polluting power plants (such as gas-, or coal-power plants). Solarpower could also be used to power the compressors at fuel station. Airar can be very effective aircleaner in big cities because they filter the air throuh catalysator. A physics textbook in finland claims that there are 40 000 aircar taxis operating in the city (possible translating error?).

The cars MDI will produce are not being sold (May 2006), and have been said to be coming into production "soon" since at least 1998. It was, for example, announced to make its public debut in South Africa in 2002[1], or "within six months" in January 2004 [2] Since there thus seems to be a delay, potential buyers can also buy their cars from ZevCat (for the time being).

Besides MDI, there is also another company that delivers fully assembled cars running on compressed air (+electric), it is called Energine Corporation and their cars are more precisely named pneumatic-hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV)s.

References

  1. ^ Kevin Bonsor (2005-10-25). "How Air-Powered Cars Will Work". HowStuffWorks. Retrieved 2006-05-25.
  2. ^ Robyn Curnow (2004-01-11). "Gone with the wind". The Sunday Times (UK). Retrieved 2006-05-25.

See also

Template:Sustainability and energy development group

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