AirCar - close to production.
It looks like the Compressed Air car has finally got close to production. The idea popped up a few years ago, but the performance figures really didn't make it look like a viable alternative that would appeal as broadly as needed to have an impact on the massive emissions from petrol-cars worldwide.
Tata (India) has recently announced its close to production on the car, designed by MDI (France).
Businessweek and Gizmag both have (almost identical) articles on it, and Gizmag has some good pictures.
Its performance figures - 110km/h (68mph); 200-300km range and either 3-4 hours on the built in compressor, or a couple of minutes at an adapted petrol station put it in the range where we don't require significant sacrifices to "go green".
This is a welcome change from Tata's other announcement in 2006 of the Nano-Car - cheap enough to encourage indian masses to move to LESS sustainable transport.
Of course the biggest problem with getting is launched is likely to be the testing regime it will have to go through (designed for 1 tonne steel monsters) in order to be sold in "developed" countries, so I predict we'll see it mainly in developing countries for a while.
Posted by mitra at July 5, 2008 3:03 PM
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