Randonneur Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Just received our February copy of the Connexion, English newspaper for Expats. There is an interview with the inventor of an "Air Car" which will be on the French market for 3700 euros. I can't put the full article on but this is the linkto their site. Look very interesting for anyone who wants to tow a car in the future. http://www.theaircar.com/acf/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randonneur Posted February 10, 2008 Author Share Posted February 10, 2008 Managed to scan a picture of the above car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4 :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basil Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Interesting concept and price and may well be a way to go. However remember the law of conservation of energy which states 'Energy cannot be made or lost you can only change its form'. What this means is that, the same as electric cars, the energy that is used to compress the air in the first place has got to be produced which uses some kind of fuel with its associated losses. How long before garages realise that their air lines are costing much more to run and then a price relative to the cost of that plus their profit is placed on them. But looks a good idea, I like it. Bas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randonneur Posted February 10, 2008 Author Share Posted February 10, 2008 Just had alook at your link. Excellent. So it looks like its going into production soon, I wonder whether it will sell, but if the price is about 3700 euros I can see that all the people who have Aixams (there are a lot down here) maybe taking another look because the Aixam is very expensive for such a small car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Basil, did you look at Link? there is a map of US and they claim that the car will travel from LA to NY on one tank of fuel (which fuels the compressor). I don't think it will be any lighter then cars like the Axium, and will still need to be on a trailer to be legal..... *-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basil Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Hi Judge, Yes I did thanks for that found it more useful than the actual website. However I would like to see how that is achieved as at the end of the day, in simplistic terms, energy is being used to move the vehicle and no matter how you view it you need to put in sufficient energy to cover the energy to move the vehicle plus any losses, 'perpetual motion' is a physical impossibility. If you take a normal petrol/ diesel powered vehicle the petrol you burn is to produce the energy required to overcome the friction within the drive train, against the air and to move the weight of and within the vehicle plus the losses in the inefficiency of burning the fuel. This 'new' engine clearly does not have much thermal loss but it will still have frictional losses. Likewise there is the thermal and frictional loss when the air is compressed to run it (thats why your footpump gets hot when you pump your tyres up) this is how the energy changes its form, so I am not sure how they are able determine these distances, they haven't done it yet and proved it have they? What size of fuel tank are we talking about, they have run special vehicles produced for economy and achieved 12,645.9 mpg and that is on a standard design internal combustion engine but powered by hydrodgen so the air car is not so impressive compared to that! Please don't misunderstand me but we need more information to make a judgement you just don't get something for nothing. Bas Bas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Basil, you have lost me! I know little of these things. and will be around to yours when i need to move refillable system to new van lol :-D I think the theory is *-) they are claiming :D that a small and extremely! economical engine is enough to produce compressed air for the tanks which the compressed air motor runs on - does that sound right? lol if you Google "air car" and select "images" instead of "web" quite a lot of pictures of various cars pop up - I think there are quite a few different people working on this..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 On the other hand its handy to have a car that can tow a motorhome should it expire (gearbox explode in reverse for example). Many Yanks tow a 4X4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basil Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 JudgeMental - 2008-02-11 12:05 PM Basil, you have lost me! I know little of these things. and will be around to yours when i need to move refillable system to new van lol :-D I think the theory is *-) they are claiming :D that a small and extremely! economical engine is enough to produce compressed air for the tanks which the compressed air motor runs on - does that sound right? lol if you Google "air car" and select "images" instead of "web" quite a lot of pictures of various cars pop up - I think there are quite a few different people working on this..... Hi Judge, On your first comment, anytime feel free just let me know. The second, yes I believe you are right that is what they are saying but you still cannot get more energy out than you put in so a small engine not producing much power would need to run longer to build up the stored energy in the compressed air tank to produce sufficient energy required to move the vehicle, unless they have discovered some way of circumventing physics and I doubt that. If you are interested at all take a look at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/energfun.pdf which is a reasonably put together piece that may be better at describing what I am trying to say. Your third, that does bring up some pics on page 2 and it's interesting that TATA, who are probably going to be the new owners of Jaguar, are taking it up next year. Bas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Then there was the research on a kinetically powered car. You plugged it into the mains electricity at home and it wound up a very heavy flywheel to super human speeds which ran in a vacuum. The transmission extracted power from the flywheel in the form of electricity to propell the car. When you applied the brakes or went down hill the extracted energy was put back into the flywheel. If you think about this though with a huge flywheel spinning say underneath the car it would only require two or perhaps only one wheel as it would stay upright like a spinning top? I guess two else you could not steer it! C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.