106-mpg Air Car for Only $18,000 Coming in 2010

The idea of an air-powered car may remind of you that Simpsons episode featuring Ed Begley, Jr. and his car, which is “powered by [his] own sense of self-satisfaction,” but it’s a real idea. Modern gasoline and diesel engines use the force of combustion to push the pistons downward and generate power. Similarly, air-powered engines feed bursts of highly compressed air into the engine to force the piston downward and create forward momentum.

It works, but is it practical?

Yes! Or, at least, possibly. As with many of these emerging technologies there are both upsides and downsides compared to existing petroleum based cars. Surely not an exhaustive list, but here are some of those issues.

Pro

Air can be compressed using power from the grid, which has cleaner emissions than normal cars and can come from renewable energy sources.

Air cars could be filled up at home or on the road. Unlike electric cars, air cars could fill up more quickly and therefore get the necessary range boosts for long trips.

Air cars can be hybrids, just like gasoline vehicles, for range-extension.

Con

There are still a lot of questions about the safety of carrying around large amounts of highly compressed air.

Unlike electric cars, air cars still have a lot of moving parts that could fail.

They are untested on the large scale

Coming in 2010: 106-mpg, $18,000 air car

That’s if you believe the claims of the inventors, MDI. MDI is a European company that has been working with the concept of air-powered vehicles since it was founded in 1991. Though they won’t be bringing the car Stateside themselves, they’re working with a NY-based company called Zero Pollution Motors to do so.

The first thing you’ll notice is the “106-mpg” figured. Since it doesn’t use gas, how can it have a “miles per gallon” figure tagged on with it? Well, as ZPM explains, that is really an mpg-equivalent figure used to compare the air car’s efficiency to gasoline-powered vehicles:

If you can, imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.

106 is definitely a high number, and as ZPM points out, is much higher than any car on the US market at the moment. I don’t know if I believe it, but I know that number is easily in reach for many electric cars, so I don’t see why it would be impossible in this case. Once the car hits the market, however, I’m sure will hear a lot more about the claimed efficiency ratings.

Similarly, you can check out the price tag here. ZPM states that using sales techniques like direct marketing, they can drive the starting-cost down to $17,800, which is a pretty good deal when you consider that it’s cheaper than any hybrid on the market.

The car will feature a 75hp engine, which allows it to reach speeds of 90 mph and have a range of up to 800 miles on any given “fill.” Though the car will be a bit more complex to operate than an EV, it will only need oil changes every 30k miles and can cost as little as $2 in electricity to fill up the air tank.

I’ll be excited to see how it does in the upcoming X-Prize competition. For now, you can find out more details at the ZPM site.

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