Comments on: Car Powered Using Compressed Air

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:24:48 +0000

When I buy a car, I want to be able to drive the car to work/home which is about a 20 minute commute each way for me. I also need to go grocery shopping, drive to see my parents who live 3 hours away and the occasional weekend which requires a long drive. If a car can not have a universal purpose…it is useless. The car must be universal and unfortunately I do not know a single person who would buy a car for the single purpose of commuting.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:57:30 +0000

That's pretty cool from one side but 4 hours to refill the tank is too much time i think. I'd better kept paying more for the oil than waiting 4 hours each 125 miles.

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:50:34 +0000

I have read about these before, the range isn’t too bad for a commuter but the top speed is generally the limiting factor with all these types of vehicles.

After much discussion and thought I have determined that the bare minimum for a commuter is 60 mile range between “refills” and a minimum cruising speed of 50mph. That would cover the needs of 80% of commuters. The optimum seems to be electric.

Outside of that you really cannot go past a vegetable oil powered vehicle i.e. a converted diesel. Nothing else really makes sense as almost everything else uses fossil fuels of one kind or another and the problem, running out, remains.

Oil companies and auto manufacturers don’t like that because they lose control of the supply. However, if GM had stuck with the original volt they wouldn’t have had to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:52:46 +0000

“An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.”

Right. Remember 10 years ago when scientists, etc. said we were only 10 years away from having cheap, reliable, avialable zero emission cars? How many different ideas are people going up with till someone says, “Ok, let’s just bite the bullet and do this.”

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:53:17 +0000

You know, that's pretty cool. Really, if you think about it, it's the same concept steam engines used – using high-pressure air to expand and rotate an object performing work. This just removes the stuff needed to actually MAKE steam.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:32:57 +0000

I really have to wonder about this… compressed air doesn’t have nearly the energy density as gasoline or hydrogen, or some other fuel that can be consumed on-board to run, say, an electric generator to power an electrical motor. And what about mechanical conversion efficiencies? How much energy does it take to compress air, and pump it into a car? Wouldn’t it be as efficient to just charge a battery for an electric motor instead of running an air compressor?

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:57:14 +0000

Is this an efficient car? I noticed the MPG stats, but my real question is reliability and efficiency of filling up? I absolutely love all these alternative energy methods for powering cars but my true concern is all this confusion as to where should our resources by allocated too. Basically I think we should focus on one or two primary methods for alternative energy and ‘maximize’ the capability.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:50:53 +0000

Probably now that Oil price are decreasing so much compressed air cars will be forgotten

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:43:07 +0000

Insightful. I like this. Will try to see whether the information provided herein is useful or not by the specific outcome after putting into use in real world practice. Thanks.

By: Curious Cat: California Uses More Gas than China

Curious Cat: California Uses More Gas than China — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:36:26 +0000

“California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s..”