Check this out. MDI, a French company, has developed a motor capable of what a normal internal-combustion engine can do, that runs on compressed air.
Yes, you read that right.
Compressed air! Imagine pulling into your garage after a day at work, pulling an extension cord out of your glove compartment, and plugging it into the wall outlet of your garage. You come out the next day and the air tank is full and ready to go. You take out the cord, and off to work you go. And this fantasy is only a year or two from now.
In 2009, MDI plans to release the CityFlowAIR, the first in a line of cars that run on a mix of a tiny amount of fuel of some kind (many are available) and a lot of compressed air. It will be sold for around $17,000. Not bad for a car you don't need gas for.
Below are two pictures, courtesy of MDI, that show these new cars.
Personally, I can't wait for these to come out and am deeply interested in them. See more info and more pictures at MDI's website.
2 comments:
Things that sound too good to be true usually aren't true.
Google e.VOlution air car to see about the year 2000 announcements by MDI. Almost word for word, except that instead of going into production in 2002, the latest announcement is for a car going into production in 2009, or maybe 2010, or maybe ...... NEVER!
The problem is compressed air vehicles is that is takes a lot of room and weight to store very much energy in compressed air. A lot more room and weight than needed for the same amount of energy in even an old lead acid battery.
That's why the only published test results of an MDI car showed it running out of air after only 7.22km/4.5 miles!!!
MDI doesn't make money selling cars. MDI is an business that rakes in investment money by selling people licenses and franchises. MDI can do well as long as they find more investors. THey never need to produce any cars, and so far, in spite of many many announcments of production dating back to before 2000, they have never produced anything other than a handful of prototypes.
None of the prototypes have ever been tested by a 3rd party such as an auto magazine. None of those prototypes appear to have actual performance anywhere close to the 120 mile range that has been claimed since 2000.
Yet every new announcement by MDI gets lots of positive press, with nobody asking "what happened to the cars that were already supposed to be in mass production?" And nobody asking "What is the ACTUAL performance of your prototypes".
*shrug*
Good points. I've had similar thoughts, and understand your views. If it works, awesome. If it doesn't...
Either way, it would be cool if these cars would come out, wouldn't it? And that's what this blog's about.
But I will try to keep it as accurate as possible.
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