The Air Car Blows Back Into the Picture

Jon Silpayamanant

September 22, 2008 by Jon Silpayamanant

0 votes

We'll have to see, I suppose!

Excerpt:

"Guy Nègre, a French engineer and president of M.D.I., said he would soon be building his environmentally friendly cars all over the world, at dedicated plants in Mexico, South Africa and the United States.

It's fair to say that the experts I contacted back then were skeptical. Andrew Frank, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis, said this about compressed air: "It's a losing game because the efficiency is just not there."

Nevertheless, the air car appears to be staging a comeback. Operating in a vastly improved environment for clean technology, M.D.I., now based in Nice, France, made a splash last year when it announced a partnership with Tata Motors of India, builder of the forthcoming Nano. The press clearly loves the story, because it involves a vehicle that "runs on air." The car? Well, in videos from France it looks pretty much the same, but it is actually new and improved, I'm told, with an onboard heater that kicks in at 35 miles an hour."

more from here:

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Forum: Talk

Tags: 

Air Car, Fuel efficiency, Alternative fuels

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2 comments

Drinky_McGee
Drinky_McGee, September 22
0 votes

That would be nice. It's going to take ages to transition to anything other than gas, though. Poor bastards like me can't afford anything but 10-year old cars.

Jon Silpayamanant
Jon Silpayamanant, September 22
0 votes

Well, yeah--it's not just the transition from gas, but transition from American's obsessions with their auto possessions. It was a god idea for the French company to team up with India developers, since there's nowhere near as much of a "gas automobile culture" there yet-no saturation means a different take on transportation has a much better chance of surviving. I think that's something that alot of people don't think about--how market saturation creates a culture of ownership--even with al things being equal, these cars will have a tough time selling here.

I think the safety issue is probably going to be the biggest hurdle--and what groups that have a vested interest in keeping these cars off the market are going to really make an issue of--which is sad.

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