Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range



By Matt Sullivan
Published on: February 22, 2008

The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

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These technologies have been around for decades...but families, such as the Rockefellers, have suppressed our efforts to make life on Earth healthy and sane. I'm sure 'You & I' won't be able to afford these cars until the Banks are satisfied with having enough gouging through their carbon taxation agenda.

But, it feels better knowing we'll eventually get there. Personally, I'm waiting on anti-gravity car...I hate road kill.

"a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gal. of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles."

This isn't free energy. You just have a car that now runs on coal as well since you probably have to plug it in to fill the compressed air tanks.

I agree ... more Coal.
Plug-in electric cars, more coal and or nuke.
I have a feeling the Coal people are pushing all of this.

As we saw in 2003 the electric grid can not handle much more drane on it. And nothing
has been done to improve it nationwide.

Compressed air is very inefficient - will unfortunately cost more than electric hybrids.
$ per mile - but you will not notice it, at the pump !

Fuel cells are twice as wasteful as gas/electric.
Need a technological "break-through" on separating hydrogen from the compounds, that it is found in.

Revolutionary air car runs on compressed airMike Aivaz and Muriel Kane
Published: Friday January 4, 2008

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Air_car_runs...d_air_0104.html

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BBC News is reporting that a French company has developed a pollution-free car which runs on compressed air. India's Tata Motors has the car under production and it may be on sale in Europe and India by the end of the year.

The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations and can go 200 km on a 1.5 euro fill-up -- roughly 125 miles for $3. The top speed will be almost 70 mph and the cost of the vehicle as low as $7000.

The car features a fibreglass body and a revolutionary electrical system and is completely computer-controlled. It is powered by the expansion of compressed air, using no combustion at all, and the exhaust is entirely clean and cool enough for use in the internal air conditioning system.

Tata Motors is known for its interest in innovation and has been selling compressed gas buses since 2000. It is currently working on producing the world's cheapest car, which will be almost 100% plastic and will sell in India for about $2500.

Tata is also expanding into the world market. It acquired Korea's Daweoo in 2004 and is now the top bidder to purchase the originally British Jaguar and Land Rover lines from the United States' troubled Ford Motor Company.

The following video is from BBC's BBC World, broadcast on January 04, 2008

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I saw about the CAT car on I think SciFi Channel. They have a French version that with a small fill up of gas, it has an on board compression re-filling system. So when it runs out of air it just refills it's own tank. That version gets 600/mpg.

I think it's great !!!

Impressive mileage to cost.
What other conventional vehicle is comparable in weight, for a comparison ?

Mini Cooper .....
Closest safer, realistic passenger vehicle; weighing in at 2496 lb. - 48.7 mi./gal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINI

Toyota has developed a new fuel cell vehicle, a green car powered by hydrogen and electricity, that can travel more than twice the distance of its predecessor model without filling up, the automaker said Friday.

The improved model's maximum cruising range is 516 miles (830 kilometres) compared with 205 miles (330 kilometres) for Toyota's previous fuel cell model, the maker of the Camry sedan and Lexus luxury cars said in a statement.

The FCHV-adv model, which received Japanese government approval Tuesday, will be available for leasing in Japan later this year, Toyota Motor Corp. spokeswoman Kayo Doi said. Pricing and other details weren't available, and overseas plans were still undecided, she said.

Fuel cell vehicles produce no tailpipe pollution, running on electricity generated by the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, producing water as the byproduct.

The FCHV-adv from the world's second biggest automaker comes with an electric motor powered by a hydrogen-fed fuel cell. Toyota's Prius hybrid switches between an electric motor and a standard gasoline engine.

Fuel efficiency in the FCHV-adv was improved 25 per cent with better braking and other changes, Toyota said. The new fuel cell vehicle can also start and run in temperatures as low as -22 F (or –30 C), it said. Getting a fuel cell to work well in cold weather is a technological challenge.

Major automakers around the world are working on fuel cells and other ecological vehicles, including electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which recharge from an electrical outlet. And consumer interest in alternative fuels is increasing amid soaring gas prices and worries about global warming.

Rival Honda Motor Co.'s revamped fuel cell vehicle for leasing in California is rolling off a Japanese factory floor later this month.

For 2010, U.S. automaker General Motors Corp. is planning a Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric vehicle, while Tokyo-based Nissan Motor Co. is planning electric vehicles for the U.S. and Japan.

Fuel cell vehicles are usually marketed through leasing arrangements since the technology is too expensive for most people to buy in an outright purchase.

Still amazed at the facination with the hype, and ignoring the "practical" reality of the application/s.


Where does one buy hydrogen ??? And what will the cost [comparable to gas] be ?
Is it worth the danger of hydrogen explosions in accidents ?

Current state of the art [technology] it cost 4X to separate hydrogen from water and other compounds - wastes 4:1 of your resultant fuel.

@ $4.30 per gallon [gas] = $17.20 per gallon hydrogen to drive comparable miles to gas.

Moving the pollution from the city, is definitely a positive ... will you pay 4 times as much for it, can the average consumer afford that - are they dedicated enough to do that - NO way !

How many years research will it take to "find" a more efficient method of separating hydrogen ????? 300 years so far !!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen#History




Electric cars, compressed gas and fuel cells will all demand more electricity = more
Coal, nuke, fossil fuel pollution - and an upgrade of the size of conductors on the electric grid. Add a few more dollars to your electric bill .....

Plugin electric will demand much less than, what hydrogen will/would; and do not have the dangerous flammable factor.
Plug-in electric are equally non polluting - where used.


Buy coal stock !!!!!


What we can do now .... are photovoltaic and windmill-electric generators - tried and proven one time pollution factor in manufacturing only; and can become independent of utility bills. But buy at least 3-4 times what you think you need, now !!!!


I still think the energy monopolies are promoting all these - electric utility dependent hypes.

Somehow, in the quest to free one's self of fossil hydrocarbons, people dream of other things, which is fine. But we cannot free ourselves from the simple laws of physics, much to our regret.

A mobile personal vehicle, such as a car, requires a method of storing energy, so that it can be released into the process of moving the vehicle from hither to yon. It requires a method of containing the energy, and of quickly replenishing it at a recharging station.

Our current method is to use chemical energy in the burning of gasoline. This is a mixture of hydrocarbons around the size of octane.

Octane combusts producing energy - 5430 kJ/mol. Thats about 48 kJ/gram, or 68 kJ/mL. This is about 272,000 kJ per gallon. We'll look at what the energy means, but suffice it to say that whatever the energy is, it takes about 10,000 kJ/mile to move an automobile that gets 27 miles/gallon.

That's a fair amount of energy. By comparison - the amount of energy just to get a human up to 60 mph is (½ *70 kg * 8100 m²/s²) is about 290 kJ. There's got to be a way to safely store the energy in a mobile vehicle.

Simple compressed air is unlikely to be useful. Compressed gas holds energy at 1 kJ = 9.8692 litre-atmosphere. To store enough energy to move a conventional motor vehicle one mile is about 100,000 liter-atmospheres.

In other terms, imagine a pressure storage container for compressed air. If one looks at a SCUBA tank, they hold perhaps 80 cubic feet of air, at 30,000 PSI. That's about 11 Liters volume inside the tank, at 200 atmospheres, or 2200 liter-atmospheres. A scuba tank will get you about 120 feet per tank. Not a real good comparison.

Assume you can make a 50 liter tank - the size of a gas tank - and pressurize it to 50,000 PSI, the pressure inside a rifle chamber when the cartridge goes off. That's around 3500 atmospheres. That gets you 175,000 liter-atmospheres, or almost two miles.

That's a ferocious amount of potential energy to have stored in a container. The pressure chamber would be prohibitively thick, and if ruptured, would explode in a most remarkable way.

There's no way to make a pressure car in any sort of believable way.

I am very suspicious of the exorbitant claims that they are making between 125 and 250 mi/gal. [comparable to gas/diesel ?]. The first claims of the India made model was that they were only going to market it in Mexico. Because they can not get them safety approved in the USA. ??? I don't know ... So dangerous they are no way comparable to vehicles approved [safe] and marketable in the USA.

The European model used gas/diesel at higher speeds .... another transitional element to go bad.
Old rule-of-thumb fewer components - greater reliability.

Diesel, instead of destroying the cylinder walls [as gas does]; diesel lubricates it and can last 500,000 to 1,000,000+ miles - and no spark plugs/rotor/wires etc.

That applies to hybrids too .... what happens as they get older ??????

No mention of re-generation .... compressing air back into the tanks as Prius does; with generators on the brakes that recharge the battery. Free energy and increases the life of the brake pads/rotors - an extremely wise application [taken from milk-trucks in the early 1900's].

Europeans use more diesels .... 25% more better mileage; less maintenance !


If they were to apply compressed air vehicles to "conventional vehicles" what would the realistic fuel mileage be ???

IT is not linear to the weight/load of the average vehicle; it is more logarithmic; compare a 2000 pound car to a semi-tractor with a load [max. 50,000 pound load] !!!!
30-45 mi/gal. vs 4-5 mi/gal.


And again - more [energy industry] hype that will demand more electricity to compress the air !!!!!

$3 for 125 miles ..... ??????? - That would equal about 150 mi/gal ........ at current rates !!!!!!

Mini Cooper 47 mi/gal. a very high safety rating ... available NOW !
Tried and proven no uncertainty !

Don't get too excited about the MDI Air Car. The launch for this car was supposed to be 2002 when Mexico City was to buy 50,000 of them to be used as taxis but it never happened.

Technically it's feasible but there seems to be something holding them back on getting the authority to produce them.......politics and big oil????????

Here's a story from 2002 but I know I had read some earlier then that date.............

Reuters News (10-27-2002)

Compressed Air Car Moves Forward
by

Rebecca Harrison

PARIS (Reuters) --- Visionary 19th century French writer Jules Verne once described a fantastical future world where cars would run on air.

He may not have been totally wrong.

Inventor, car enthusiast and environmentalist Guy Negre has built a car powered by compressed air and hopes it will be chuffing along roads across the world within the next few years.

Inside Negre's car, cold air compressed in tanks to 300 times atmospheric pressure is heated and fed into the cylinders of a piston engine.

No combustion takes place, so there is no pollution. In fact, says Negre, the air from the exhaust pipe is cleaner than the air that goes in, thanks to an internal filter.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu7zVpnBImT8A...negre/negre.htm

Electric doesn't depend on coal. We are just using coal to produce electricity...don't blame the car for that. Once we produce electricity by other means, the electric car keeps on chugging. These are "future-proof".

Safety of that much pressure?

Darn someone stole my idea. I always think of how nature works and try to reproduce it mechanically. So I was watching this girl one day and I had a moment of clarity, blondes run on air, why not cars ? The rest is history. Now when are American Chinese going to invent a car that runs on cats that's what I want to know. You know just pop a live cat in the tank and off ya go.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D-A3XHFT5qc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dq8aZVLpf-c

Nope, never.

Christ, what do you want? A car that runs on happy thoughts and smiles?

You don't need to get energy from coal or nuclear power. We still haven't begun to truly harness solar power, we're just starting to explore tidal energy and nuclear power (despite what everyone thinks) is only as dangerous as the people running the plant. (No one died after the 3 Mile Island melt down; Chernobyl was the fault of the techs.)

Still ain't buying it. Compressing air to 4500 PSI in the tanks - gets you about 1000 feet. If you compare it to the energy use of an internal combustion engine. So maybe their technology is MUCH more efficient than the internal combustion engine. Maybe a couple of miles.

And - um - cold air is heated? That requires - heat. Where does this come from? Maybe if the cars are used in the Mojave Desert, okay - but driving in Green Bay in February? Not much heat up there. Gotta burn something.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D-A3XHFT5qc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dq8aZVLpf-c

The 48.7 mpg–imp rating uses UK imperial gallons. The rating for a Mini Cooper tops out around 40.5 MPG–U.S. Most drivers will average around 34 to 36 MPG depending on driving habits.

I am currently getting around 35 to 37 MPG in my Toyota Yaris. I get around 80 MPG on the Vespa.

Best Regards,

Just being realistic ...

Electric currently runs on [40 % coal worldwide, close to 50% in the US] .....

due to the inherent energy transfers/losses :

1. charging batteries [as much as 30%, heat loss], discharging batteries to run the motor
[as much as 30%, heat loss]; net 40% - you need 2 1/2 times as many photovoltaic or wind generators to replace the power produced by current coal sources.

2. Hydrogen needs at least 4 to 5 times as much, from alternative sources ....

"future reality ...."

So you admit that it's doable. Difficult, but doable. Thank you.

Sorry, what's the point? What are the links? If I can't view these, is there something I might want to know there?

OK so my kid is on the wait list for 2010 delivery. As for the heat compressing the air heats it, havent you ever touched a bike pump? Relasing the pressure causes cooling-just check the air comming out of high pressure hose at a garage. The tanks are carbon fiber built by Airbus. The prototypes work I feel the hang up has been low priority from big energy who have mortaged their ass on hydrogen and other stuff.

No, just noting the current "realistic" limitations ... Coal's predominant use now, public ignoring the 2001 California grid problems [continuing] and 2003 electric [blackout] grid problems ... in the Midwest ...

sorting out the like you tube - marketing videos .... hype !!!!

If the air cars work what would keep them off the road in China and India - where they are not manipulated by corporations and the media representing them ??? And have the greatest energy demand in the world ?????


Not ignoring the obvious "ulterior motives" of the "existing Energy cabals ....."
Who do not want to give up their monthly billing monopolies ...
to individually owned solar and wind - that are available now !!!!!

No matter who they continue to pollute, kill and bill !!!!



Starting to explore nuclear !!!!! .... we are sitting on 40+ years of waste on each site, that need to be cooled constantly !!! Everyone of those plants are extremely hazardous; and the tax-payers have to subsidize them, because they are un-insurable.

No one will fund new plants, they have to be subsidized by nefarious political manipulation - i.e. 2002 Cheney energy cabal. - at the tax-payers expense again.
And no one wants it in their backyard !!!
Ignoring the possible nefarious threats.... build more targets !!!

Got links to your claims ????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil...clear_accidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental...f_nuclear_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_...ar_power_plants




How many Chernobyl style plants do we still have running in the US ?
Do you know ???


Chernobyl radiation, 10 years after the explosion ...



full size ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chernob...on_map_1996.svg


The plume drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to official post-Soviet data,^[2] about 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster




And will take 10 years or more to bring them on line !!!!!!
And they will cost 1000's of time more than wind/solar ... for 10,000+ years !

Link ????

What's in the links are the air powered cars that you say can't exist.

Also, what country do you live in that you can't use Youtube?

There are certain things which can be improved by innovation, and there are other things which are bound to obedience by the immutable laws of physics.

Once an innovator describes a certain method for the storage of energy, that method is bound to follow its physical and natural law, no matter how fervently people may wish that it doesn't, or the "inventor" pretend that it shouldn't.

Regular old air becomes hotter when it is compressed. It becomes cooler when it expands. This is the nature of air, and governs the properties of the atmosphere, for instance, when air rises or sinks in the atmosphere. There is no means to get around these laws, other than by confusing people who are listening to their presentation by an "inventor."

The use of compressed air causes the environment at which it is released to cool. If heat is not applied to that area, it will become cold to the point at which it will not operate. There must be external heating of that region - or else considerable patience, while it warms up again.

This is merely a small aspect of the problem of compressed air vehicles. The most important is that compressed air is a lousy means to store energy, and cannot be utilized to operate a vehicle efficiently.

The country which I live in is one, regrettably, where people would post an undescribed link or two to YouTube, and consider that substantiation of an argument. A country which can no longer differentiate between slickly-packaged hucksterism, and reality.

YouTube is a litterbox of unsubstantiated rubbish being touted as fact, and those who cannot distinguish between fact and seeing it on the TeeVee, are welcome to amuse themselves there. I do not doubt that I can give you video footage of Bigfoot from YouTube.

Your argument, which you did not bother to offer in your post, suggests that showing pictures of a glossy automobile shell carries more substantive weight than proof that something cannot operate according to the principles which it claims.

Very well. I am selling an automobile which goes 186,000 miles on one pound of beach sand, and converts it into pure spring air. It goes from zero to sixty in one second, and sells for $100. But I have posted it here on YouTube! When you get done, tune in FoxNews for more glossy facts.

I'm sorry to be impolite, but nonsense is nonsense, no matter whether someone takes a video of it.

There are means of addressing the oil crisis, but shilling for hucksters is not one of them. This is aking to Winning In Iraq! and The Surge Is Working! I can find plenty of internet trash to support these arguments, too.

This goes just beyond transportation and energy, to show a strong failing of America, which is the intellectual sluttishness of many of our citizens. We have long decried the "snake-oil salesman" as a predator upon the gullible. But Americans have an awful bad habit of aggressively defending and embracing such nonsense as makes them feel better, as opposed to that which makes rational common sense.

People view FoxNews as a bad agent, whereas it really is a symptom. A majority of Americans six years ago were delighted to embrace the "talking points" of smoking guns and mushroom clouds and Saddam and 9/11. Now, we are unhappy about this, and oppose Bush - but many of us cannot explain why, other than our Friendly Media does not like him as much as before.

Many people will vote against Barack Obama because he is Muslim, which he isn't, because they are not permitted to hate him for being Black, which he is, and they do. Those ideas make us feel good about protecting America, flying the Eagle, and voting for Hero John. Whether anything has the slightest lick of common substance to it, is irrelevant. Does it make us feel good? Then wave the flag!!

And we are willing to wave the flag over any "alternative energy vehicle" whether or not it is nonsense. You can buy converters for your carburetor on-line to convert your car from gasoline to water. IF that is what makes you happy, go for it!

What the hell do you think is in the video? You haven't even looked a it. It's not some nut describing a pipe dream. It's a documentary put out by the Australian Broadcasting Company about a French car manufacturer and an Australian Engineer who have two different designs for a pressurized-air powered car and have them in circulation as town cars and light industrial machines.

Oh but it's youtube, so it must be junk. Don't even look, just dismiss it because guilt by association has always been a good way of judging things.

Two people with "vested interest" in the ...... pipe dreams ...

This is the second thread her in a month or so on the topic
.... first make outrageous claims on mileage/dollars per mile ....

Yet ...

.... compressed air engines ... efficient ... now (15%) ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engine#Ef...ent_air_engines

Gas and diesel are 30-40% efficient ... therefore it will take twice as much energy to compress air - twice as much coal pollution, currently.

IS it adaptable to conventional vehicles, not just modified golf carts.


Ignoring the physics and falling for the hype .... isn't helping anyone but the Energy monopolies !



Pathological science is the process in science in which "people are tricked into false results ...
by subjective effects,
wishful thinking or
threshold interactions".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science

whining about how cars will be on the grid because of coal is an example of someone who doesn't understand much about it.

So what if it is reliant on coal initially. It's American coal, not Saudi coal. Get the cars on the grid and then we can work on changing the supply of the grid. Plus the amount of emissions from a coal power plant per mile won't be near the emissions coming from every individual tailpipe.

On top of that, you limit the emissions to specific locations so the pollution controls can be much more focused, monitored and adjusted. Can't do that with every single car.

=========

on a side note...

check out the submissions to the x-prize automotive contest. You know how McCain said he'd offer money to someone who could come up with a better car battery? All he had to do was mention the automotive x-prize rather than making promises doling out our tax monies and praying someone else can bail him out with their idea.

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/auto/...e-details/teams

and driving around in their delicious pipe dreams.

Here, figure it out for yourself. I have no patience for hearing what you watch on television.

1 joule is equal to 0.00987 liter atmosphere, or 7.6E-9 gallon [U.S.] of automotive gasoline.

1 megajoule is equal to 9870 liter atmosphere, or 7.6E-3 gallon [U.S.] of automotive gasoline.

To get the equivalent energy storage of one gallon of gasoline, one needs to store 131.59 megajoules in some form. To do so with compressed air requires 1,298,684. liter-atmospheres of pressure storage.

Assume one has a 100 liter tank to store air in. That's awfully big. You need to store the air at about 1300 atmospheres, or 194,805 PSI. That's far beyond what any known material can tolerate. (And that's just to get the equivalent storage of ONE GALLON of gas.)

Go ahead, and watch your movies about people zipping about in their magic cars. And then vote for John McCain because he will balance the budget and cut taxes - that's on YouTube, as well!

Look, you didn't even watch the video; you don't know how they did it or what the engine looks like.

It's not an amateur youtube video, it's taken from the Australian Broadcasting Company and posted from there on youtube.

Also, just because I disagree with you doesn't make me a McCaniac. If anyone here is even remotely close to McCain on this issue it's you oh Mr. Petrol-is-the-end-all-and-be-all-of-energy. But I won't make that claim because I'm better than some who take a single point of disagreement and extrapolate from that a person's polar oppositivity to me.

We seem to be caught in some sort of dreadful impasse. You assert that the Australian Broadcasting Company is authoritative over logic and common sense. I suggest that the Australian Broadcasting Company has no voice which is authoritative over logic and common sense. I suggest to you that such thinking is similar to those who watch FoxNews and believe that it is authoritative over logic and common sense.

There are people who are unable to quiet their doubts about things, just because an authority has spoken about it. Whether it is on the BBC, CBS News, CBC, Fox, Australia's Broadcasting Company, PBS, the Free Republic, or the Randi Rhodes Message Board, I know of no authority who may be authoritative enough to contravene reality.

I do not know whether the ABC and Rupert Murdoch have many overlaps. Keith Murdoch, Rupert's father, was active in many outlets. There may be a tie between them - I simply do not know.

But willing suspension of one's own reason and common sense does nobody any good. The country may again vote for Mr. McCain, who will promise things which oppose economic reason and common sense, but it will not make these things come to pass. But I find a troubling trend - that is, Americans' unwillingness to think for themselves - and suggest that it is here on this topic.

Actually it isn't owned by Murdoc, it, like the BBC and CBC, is owned and run by the state and it, like the BBC and CBC, puts out quality documentaries.

I'm not claiming that it trumps common sense, I'm claiming that it completely refutes you and your refusal to even watch it does not convince me that it is wrong.

I am full of a lot of hot air...Man, I could fill it up all by myself!

The question of ABC is really an aside.

Some people have posted wiki information here and here. They describe compressed air stored at 4500 PSI (300 atmospheres) and store the energy equivalent of 0.44 gallons of gasoline. That's 57.9 mJ worth of energy stored, or 571,421 liter-atmospheres. For a tank pressured to 300 atmospheres, it must hold 1904 liters of compressed air. (470 gallons, or about 1.9³ meters )

I am not trying to be unkind, but there is no TV show that I can watch, which makes simple physics go away. I am annoyed by the details discussed on the "air car," as the specifics on its feasibility are buried in the print, and depend upon the general American innumeracy about simple things in daily life.

Perhaps this car can do better than, say, 50 MPG equivalent in testing. That would give it a twenty-two mile range between fill-ups. The compressed air tank is six feet square on a side. How is this an improvement?

And watching it on TV is only the equivalent of watching David Copperfield or Uri Geller. Amazing things can be done before a live audience, and still more on tape. But Penn and Teller would never convince you that what they do is real. They are honest.

PS: One does not triumph over The Big Dog, the Internal Combustion Engine, simply by sending little dogs up against it.

We are stuck over the barrel, literally, because internal combustion is such an incredibly powerful and portable method of delivering power to a certain situation, including transportation. Gasoline has very high energy densities.

There are issues about compressed-air vehicles being less safe and more noisy than the ICE, as well. But physical storage of energy is generally a lose, for reasons of quantity of energy storage, and other factors. Sorry.

And the TV can't tell me otherwise.

If you would actually watch the video, which I assume you still haven't, you would know that the designers know that the air-pressure engine is only a solution for local/city driving, it can only make 40mph which is useless on the freeway but saves a lot of gas that would be wasted in the stop and go of cities.

I'm not saying that it will replace the combustion engine but there is potential as a non-petrol consuming city car.

Wait a minute. The glossy cover says 1000 miles range, now it's "just about town" when you read the fine print?

That don't make me very reassured.