Cars that run on air????

This has been in the works for a while now. The last company that tried had range problems. It is tough to compress enough air to push something as heavy as a car very far. As an energy storage medium, however, air is a lot more attractive than hydrogen.

The end of the video mistakenly considers perpetual motion.

The car doesn't run on air as a fuel source. That would probably require a nuclear reaction. It uses pressurized air to store energy. The concept is old, but how they are doing it what may make it practical.

It's easy to get confused over what is the fuel source. In this case it's a mistake to say that 'air' is the fuel, air is only used as a means to put energy in the vehicle. The energy comes from somewhere else and runs an air compressor. Later that energy is released when the air is pumped through the engine.

I've looked at Negere's company before.. the car uses an engine with cylinders and a crank shaft and would look very familiar to a gear head, except there's no gasoline. Instead the cylinders are filled with air from the compressed air tank, and they do it at precisely timed intervals. One tweak is to heat the air before it enters the engine.

They've been at this for a long time.. the first time I heard of them was 2003 when someone was at the New Living Expo in San Francisco trying to drum up investors for a factory to be built in California. At the time MDI wanted to set up a series of local factories who turned out designs made by the central company (MDI). Somehow that plan fizzled. I can say the proposal made me very nervous and I backed away. Last year they made an announcement that Tata Motors in India would be building cars for them. Tata is a huge industrial conglomerate in India and they make vehicles from huge trucks down to cars.

Its another one of the many, better ways to do it, things that just costs too much at this time. But as fuel gets more expensive, infrastructure to refill air tanks can be buit, storing compressed air till we need it, using off peak electricity to run the compressors. Range will be a problem, but since a refill is fast, it could be easier than battery exchanges or such. One nice thing, its a whole lot cheaper than a fuel cell. It could be really good technology for busses, which could refill at stops on the route. If the pollution source can be moved away from cities in valleys, at least it helps the air. I'm still wondering what happened to the flywheel vehicles. It's the only one left from the 80's yet to resurface.