Comments on: Voila! A Car Powered By Air

French Duo Says No Combustion, Zero-Emissions Vehicle Runs For Pennies Per Mile

[webdepot]

xxeroid-
Acording to their website, current capacity allows about 200km (120) miles) on a tank of air.. not yet ready for the long haul highway trip, but very practical for the around town trips to the doctor, grocer, church, etc. and since approximately half the drivers today put in less than a hundred miles per day, would go far toward reducing pollution, even at it is currently available.

[cantshutup]

Please see WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? A car that runs on air is wonderful, but we already had an electric car which was killed by GM, the government, and the Oil/Automotive industry. When the oil corporations realized there was supposedly still 3 trillion barrals of oil still in the ground, they helped kill the electric car. Everything is about profit with these people and there won't be alternatives in America while they can still make a profit and still control our lives.

[xxeroid]

It's cute, but is it practical? We now know it sounds like a lawn mower. My question is, how far will this thing travel on a tank of air before you have to refill it.

[webdepot]

This same gentleman is also working on a hybrid combo of combustion and air driven engines.. At city speeds, the car would run on air, at highway speeds, the car would run on combustible fuels (gasoline, ethynol, etc.)...
He is, once again though, thinking ahead as the car, when being powered by combustion, will also be replenishing the air tanks.. How cool is that??

Yes, anxiously waiting for the technology to come to the U.S.. I think it sould have been invented years ago but the oil companies were too greedy for that to happen. Now we have higher gas prices and the prospect still doesn't good

[webdepot]

In response to the naysayers and carrying my previous post a bit further, lets look at ALL the polluting sources that go into getting your gasoline.... we can start here:
1-electricity used to get the oil out of the ground (and the polluting source of that electricity)
2-the pollution generated by the ships and trucks used to move the raw and finished products from point a to point b.
3-the electricity used to refine the crude into a finished product.
4-the pollution caused by burning the finished product..
I wonder, how many cars could be powered by the electricity used to produce gasoline..
This is, at the very least, a start in the right direction.. This vehicle eliminates the pollution from item 4... next is to tackle one of the remaining three steps and so on down the line..
Of course, for the naysayers again, a wind turbine or two in my back yard used to run the air compressor would make my use of the vehicle totally non-polluting, now wouldn't it??

[webdepot]

I have been touting this man's invention for the past two years.. I love all the naysayers comments which amount to: "well, it's not really running on air, it's running on the fossil fuels that compressed the air".. Technically correct and no arguement here, however, electricity is mass produced at the power plant and I would venture to guess the pollution at the power plant that equates to 2 bucks of electricity is very considerably less than the pollution my car produces now on a half tank of gasoline not to mention the fact, electricity is also used at the refineries to produce the polluting gasoline in the first place.
What is interesting though from this manufacturer's website is this: the inventor will be making his money by sellinng production licenses around the world. He has apportioned each country into zones, so he knows how many licences each country will have.
If you look at the map of liceneces currently sold, many european, middle east and south american countries are already sold out... the U.S., not one licence has been sold..
For my current driving needs, this vehicle would suit me just fine and although I consider the body design less than appealing, I would proudly thumb my nose at all the gas stations I pass in my daily travels...
Instead of denigrating a forward thinking inventor and his product, how about giving credit where credit is due..

[joeydog7]

CAR DRIVEN BY AIR ?? NICE, BUT OUR LOUSY, STINKEN COOKED GOVERNMENT, WILL FIND SOMEWAY TO KEEP IT OFF THE MARKET,,,,,,

[crtoo]

Great Idea. I have been waiting to see someone, somewhere use their brains to invent something that we can use that is free. MAYBE, the fist stages will use fuels INDIRECTLY to charge the batteries, but, that is really narrow thinking. From this point someone can work on the solar end to charge the batteries, and once the auto is moving, with a set of reducing gears a second generator can charge the batteries. Guess what after that it is all free of fuels and polution free, except for the production, paint, wax, soap, old batteries, waste metals and rubber left on the highways, sewars, land fills, etc. What happened to the generation that is supposed to "think out of the box"? This article should get people to push the auto industries to build earth bound vehicles free of polutants and a car that regenerates its own energy. The hydro concept is expensive and earth bound and uses a non renewable source-forget it.

[agnim]

Good point, Ashlay; we should delude ourselves and ignore the potentially polluting source of the energy used to compress the air in the first place.

Seems like the whole french thingy is just a lot of hot/compressed air; but is that new with the fwench? LOL

[kesac4650]

The big oil companies can no more stop such things than IBM could stop the personal computer. What will stop it is the cost/convenience factor. Air is compressed with energy derived from fossil fuels. A compressed air tank can only hold so much energy.
Like the old Volkswagen commercial that showed that a Volkswagen can definitely float.
These cars can definitly run, but cannot run indefinitly.

[rghay-2009]

Good Technology on the car powered by air.RGhay..

[RBojji]

Energy appears in various forms and it is incorrect to look at only a car and its pollution- the total cycle of energy production and usage has to be considered. Our civilisation has become a guzzler of energy and whether you take fossil fuel or nuclear energy as primary sources, pollution of earth continues. Hydro-electricity , to my mind seems a safe bet. Solar or hydrogen or compressed air etc have to be checked for the total life cycle of energy required to produce the components themselves, to judge. Hope some day we discover a way of using gravitons within our body cells to float away and appear wherever we want!

[ms38654ob]

paulyn44,

Yes, they call it a hovercraft. There are several in commercial operation, one I believe still travels across the English Channel. The US Marines use them as landing craft too.

They will never be practical for every day use as they are very inefficent, are hard to control and are very noisy.

[bobfox321]

The biggest stumbling block to fuel cell cars (and maybe air, but beware of the French) are the oil conglomerates and chains. There will be new BILLIONAIRES for he/she that gets us there first. Specially if we can retrofit our existing dirty gas vehicles ! This is a crtical step for the USA so we can stop sending our money for oil which in turn funds terrorism. GO AMERICAN INGENUITY.

[chipper777]

I believe it was in 1962 when I was very young and read a weekly reader that they had in grade schools, about France having a white vehicle that looked like an old nash rambler that ran with no tires and floated on aor using big fans. Any chance of anyone coming up with a story on that vehicle again? It looked really neat. They said however that when they pushed the lever forward, the vehicle went backwards and the other way, if the lever was pushed backwards.