The basic idea isn’t too bad. Although I expect that the NHTSA will nix it because of the high pressure tank that would go boom if there were an accident.
Some designer wasn’t very worried about blind spots or head on collisions. It’s a Sponge Bob Dustbuster with a glass jaw, the merits of its propulsion or the lack of them notwithstanding.
bflr
Old idea taken from the locomotives that used to run in mine railroads (even compressed steam would have been too dangerous). Compressed-air cars were tried, like electric cars, at the turn of the last century. What next, a revival of steam-powered automobiles too?
False.
43 mph = 69.2018 km/h...and its not very fast.
“an electric motor that can ‘refuel’ the car while its in motion”
Bunk. How does it manage that? By trailing an extension cord?
The basic scientific illiteracy of today’s reporters is breathtaking.
Looks like a foot ball helmet with knobs on the sides.
If this thing from India, it runs on coal. The coal is just burned someplace else.
Compressed air is the energy storage medium, not the energy source. Using a storage medium, like a battery or a compressed air tank, shifts the point of use of the energy, but it does not eliminate the need to burn coal. And, given the inefficiencies of transmitting electricity, running a generator, compressing the air and running the air piston engine, you probably have to burn a lot of coal to move this little death-trap down the road.
This thing is about as green as poorly tuned 1965 Chevy Suburban towing a horse trailer.
FIFY
I got a better name for it: “Isetta!”
How can that thing be called a “car”?
I seriously doubt that itty-bitty hose is going to be able to move that much air that fast. I don’t care how high the pressure is.
Looks like a 1/4 or 3/8 ID hose. If it’s 5000 psi it would have to be a very strong hose, so possibly the ID is even less.
Here in Texas one could not stay in this thing five minutes in the summer.
“One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill. “
There’s the money line.
1 Euro = $1.23. That’s a penny a mile.
You’d have to get 370 miles per gallon of gasoline to equal that.
Zero emission (local big city).
Cool machine.
As many have pointed out, compression of air CAN be very inefficient due to the heat generated by compression but ONLY if you throw that heat away.
DUH! In any process, if you throw away any product or byproduct, that increases the waste and lowers efficiency, so why do it!
If however, you were to retain the heat via good insulation, then a couple of things come into play. First a downside, you will reduce the effective volume of storage with the higher temperature air BUT when that air is released through the motor it will simply return to very close to the original ambient temperature before compression thus greatly increasing efficiency because the heat was not thrown away instead allowed to work for you.
Right now in most systems heat is deliberately thrown away and when the air is released through the air motor it now exits at a much, much lower temperature and in some cases can cause icing.
There are some huge energy storage systems developed and some underdevelopment which store vast amounts of compressed air for load balancing in electric generation systems. Some have even used abandoned mines. In these systems engineers are playing with the advantages of retaining the heat thus greatly increasing the efficiency with the resulting loss of storage volume (not an efficiency issue but certainly not to be ignored).
Load balancing storage for electrical generation systems is proven technology albeit in different forms. For example, Niagara Falls is near to where I live and during the night or times of low demand, water is diverted into a very large man made reservoir. When demand increases, that stored water is run down through the turbines to increase the power generated without taking more water out of the Niagara River than is allowed by agreement with the USA and Canada. As long as that large leak in Lake Erie has water we have power.
The systems I mentioned using compressed air in large volumes accomplishes the same thing but without the water.