tecoyah

Great Idea....but it still hurts the environment as much as a gas car.....still at least people are "thinking" about new energy sources.

PARIS - Record-high oil prices might seem like bad news for the auto industry. But one European manufacturer plans to make a type of car unaffected by $50-a-barrel crude — cars that run on compressed air.


"It's safe, doesn't pollute, doesn't explode, it's not poisonous and it's not expensive," said Sebastien Braud, a representative for Luxembourg-based Moteur Developpement International.

Inside the Air Car, an electric pump compresses air into a tank. The air in turn pumps pistons that take the vehicle up to 70 mph. The car can travel 50 miles at top speed on a full tank, and farther at lower speeds.

The company plans to make two versions — a three-seat compact priced at $9,850 and a six-seat sedan for $16,000.

The air pump that fuels the car plugs into an ordinary household socket and takes four hours to recharge.

"When you get home you normally plug in your cell phone," Braud said. "Well, now you do that with your car, too."

Slightly pricier Air Cars achieve higher speeds and longer ranges by running on a combination of compressed air and conventional gasoline or bio-fuels derived from organic matter.

MDI says the air-only models meet the needs of most urban drivers, who average just 11 miles a day. And the only exhaust that comes out of the tail pipe is cold air.

The already attractive economics of the Air Car — MDI claims a recharge costs just $2.50 at French electricity prices — will become even more persuasive if oil prices stay high.

"It certainly can't hurt," said Braud. "It will help encourage people to switch over."

The company says the cars — the brainchild of former Formula One engine designer Guy Negre — initially will go on sale in France, where production is to begin in June.

The price of a barrel of light sweet crude eased back on the New York Mercantile Exchange after Tuesday's record intraday high of $50.47 but remained around the $50 mark Thursday.

But auto analysts played down the Air Car's chances of taking off, unless a major car maker buys the technology and markets it through its own network.

"If you buy a Peugeot or a Renault, you know that there's a dealer close by if you have a problem," said Gaetan Toulemonde of Deutsche Bank Securities. "If your car has only one dealer in France, what are you going to do when it needs repairs?"

Toulemonde said about 10,000 electric cars had been sold in France since major manufacturers introduced them a decade ago. Many now outperform the Air Car in terms of speed and range but nonetheless remain niche products.

Environmentalists are also wary about the Air Car's claimed benefits. Converting energy from electricity to compressed air is inefficient, according to Karsten Krause of the European Federation for Transport and Environment, a green lobby group based in Brussels.

By consuming much more energy from the power plant than it delivers on the road, Krause said, it could even do as much environmental damage as some gasoline cars.



"You may not have any pollution from the car itself," he said, "but you're just transferring the environmental burden to another place."

Krause's organization pushes a much simpler recipe for cutting greenhouse gas and toxic emissions from vehicles. If consumers ditched their SUVs and other gas guzzlers and chose engine capacities reflecting their real needs, he said, fuel consumption would drop by a third.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...france_air_car

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Rodney

They've been around for a while. The cars actually drive -- I've seen demo video, including one with a journalist driving it and reporting on it -- but range is the real issue. Whenever asked when the cars will be ready for release, the date is always "next year," and it's been "next year" for the past three years now. I suspect that they can't actually yet do anything like 50 miles in range, and some believe they'll never be able to. In the meantime, they raise money by franchising out manufacturing rights to entrepreuners in different countries.

But as you say, tecoyah, it's always good to keep thinking about alternatives. In my town, electric motor scooters are becoming more popular, because a lot of people commute less than ten miles and the weather's generally good. You can buy a street-legal electric scooter here (the eGo is the popular model) for about $600 (after a $300 subsidy that the county gives to electric bicycles), and they do about 20 mph, have a range of 25 miles per hour, and can haul a fair amount of cargo. And they're fully charged on 15 cents of electricity. The official eGo dealer around here (he's got an alternative energy shop) says he's sold 60 in the last six months.

The eGo is not a technological breakthrough, but it's a very practical package of features. It gives the single short-haul commuter a convenient and very low-cost alternative to the car with most of the advantages of a car. And it's more energy-efficient in a lot of ways, not the least because you don't have to expend the energy needed to move 2000 pounds of metal along with your bod.

tangledweb

Oil prices may not come down to a level that many people can afford easily for quite some time. It is also great to see that there are some short term alternatives that are getting some press.

Most of the "auto-alternatives" are pure B/S but there are some ideas that can be stripped from them. I believe that there is enough greed left in the auto industry that when a really valid and useable formula is found, it will be everywhere.