Posted on 01/23/2013 9:14:57 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
If you have ever grimaced at your petrol bill and dreamed of a car that runs on fresh air, your prayers are about to be answered.
French car giant PSA Peugeot Citroen believes it can put an air-powered vehicle on the road by 2016.
Its scientists say it will knock 45 per cent off fuel bills for an average motorist. And when driving in towns and cities costs could be slashed by as much as 80 per cent because the car will be running on air for four-fifths of the time.
The system works by using a normal internal combustion engine, special hydraulics and an adapted gearbox along with compressed air cylinders that store and release energy. This enables it to run on petrol or air, or a combination of the two.
Air power would be used solely for city use, automatically activated below 43mph and available for 60 to 80 per cent of the time in city driving. By 2020, the cars could be achieving an average of 117 miles a gallon, the company predicts.
The air compression system can re-use all the energy normally lost when slowing down and braking. The motor and a pump are in the engine bay, fed by a compressed air tank underneath the car, running parallel to the exhaust.
The revolutionary new Hybrid Air engine system the first to combine petrol with compressed air is a breakthrough for hybrid cars because expensive batteries will no longer be needed...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
So a French car blows? Not surprised.
No thanks!
I’d buy this car, assuming that the tanks can be repressurized repeatedly for the next ten years. It would knock off a fair bit off my costs.
>>So a French car blows? Not surprised<<
Ya know, it is completely unfair you win the thread on the first post!!!
Next time, give others a chance.
Just for that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
Let it ear-whig you...
;) :)
So it uses compressed air as a battery. Maybe that has some advantages over an electric hybrid. I don’t know. But air is not the primary energy source. Something will have to compress the air. And that will take energy.
Compressed air as an energy storage medium has a lot of possibilities. Also there are hydraulic hybrids that work on a similar principal that have proven well in tests by UPS, FedEx, garbage trucks, etc that do a lot of start-stop driving and can reclaim a good fraction of energy from braking.
I would be interested to know what kinds of technology they have in mind that makes this idea attractive after all these years it has been kicking around.
I can only imagine what would happen to someone in that car who has a dust up with a regular sized sedan, or God forbid! a pickup.
Kaboom!
I worked on a project in college in the 80’s that would convert a 58 Cadillac coupe DeVille to run on compressed gas. It had an small diesel engine to compress the gas in a storage tank. Stopping would recharge the tanks.
Couldn’t be worse than a smart car! If Peugeot builds them like they used to it should hold up. My brother in law backed a moving van into my Mom’s 505’s door and it basically just pushed the car up the curb. They used to put a heavy steel tube in the doors.
The BMW smart car is rated as being able to stand up to North American accident standards, so it might not be too bad.
I’d need to see the ratings for this car though.
Had one of these on the farm I grew up on, it was always breaking down.
In fact Citroen has a few things right. Their air (or hydraulic) suspension is simply superb and they are who first used it decades ago. I had an opportunity to drive their C5 wagon. It was an extremely smooth ride for a middle-sized sedan. It negotiates unpaved outback in such a way you almost feel like it is a merc on the highway.
What will they call this car? The PHART as in personal hot air rolling transit?
:-)
If the BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit then what would the nickname for the system be in Fresno?
For some reason I’ve always found this really funny.
For some reason Ive always found this really funny.
Friend lived out there awhile. Natives didn't appreciate him calling it Frisco....
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