Air-powered Car – “Coming Soon”

Over the years, I’ve had several friends send me this “air car” concept.  It’s a terrible idea in terms of engineering and physics, but that’s not the most objectionable thing about it; it’s a bald-faced attempt at deceit. The fact that the company is called “Zero Pollution Motors” and that the car features a huge decal that reads “Air” is a suggestion that they are targeting consumers who are sufficiently ignorant as to believe that compressed air doesn’t require energy, and thus that the product literally means “zero pollution.”

Of course, this is untrue.  Obviously, if you have energy from whatever source, you can do anything you want with it, including compressing air and sticking it into a tank inside a car. But we need to ask a few important questions: where did the energy come from? (Hint: Next time you pull into a gas station and inflate your tires, listen to that gasoline-powered compressor kick on.) How overall efficient are the processes of charging and discharging the air tanks? What does this mean about the true eco-friendliness of the car?

And here’s another: How does all this inefficiency translate into the vehicle’s range? The engineers here must have at least some indication that range is going to be an issue, or they wouldn’t be talking about building a car that’s not much larger and heavier than the desk on which I’m writing this post (and offering it for sale at $10,000).

Is it “coming soon?”  Fortunately, no.