I have been reading a lot of reports about compressed air powered cars lately.Apparently a company in India has begun production on a four seater that can go 186 miles on single charge at speeds up to 68 mph.There is also a French company which plans on building air powered cars.
Would you consider buying an air powered car if it were proven to be safe and reliable?
Do you think this would be a better alternative than ethanol and other bio-fuels?
And would it be realistic to think that this would be the fastest way to produce petroleum independent cars in the United States?
I'm asking this in Politics because I see this as more of a political consideration than a technological or environmental one,because this would require a huge amount of political will to accomplish,mainly because it would affect our relationships with OPEC and would have the potential to affect the profits of oil companies to the tune of billions.
2007-03-22 09:16:02 · 8 answers · asked by Zapatta McFrench 5 in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
Compressed air has to come from somewhere and that requires energy. I don't have any figures, but it should be fairly obvious that compressed air is a poor means of energy storage - that is, it would cost more to compress the air, a lot more, than you would ever get out of it - and that usually means burning oil somewhere.
The same problem holds for hydrdogen power. While hydrogen is abundant, it is always bound up with something else, like oxygen to form water. It costs more energy to release the oxygen that you can get back from it, and that energy comes from oil right now. It is the same problem with corn ethanol. A lot of oil is burned growing, harvesting, processing and transporting corn, more than the return.
2007-03-22 09:24:19 · answer #1 · answered by James 3 · 3⤊ 1⤋
most of you are not very intelligent, you dismiss this out of hand because the "energy has to come from somewhere", but do you have any idea how inefficient the internal combustion engine is? generating stations can make power MUCH more efficiently even when you factor in transmission losses, so yes, this is a worthwhile technology
2007-03-22 16:36:57 · answer #2 · answered by Nick F 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They tried sails and they have proven after hundreds of years of exhaustive research that air is an unreliable power source.
2007-03-22 16:47:17 · answer #3 · answered by Rja 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, but it would depend on price, if the cost of the technolgy was to much then it wouldn't be practical to buy the car. It is interesting to look into that though.
2007-03-22 16:23:12 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Too bad they can't make a car that runs on hot air. We have an ever abundant supply of that in Washington D.C.
2007-03-22 16:49:45 · answer #5 · answered by .... . .-.. .-.. --- 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
My only question would be:
What powers the mechanism that compresses the air that will drive the car?
If you're back to fossil fuels than we haven't solved anything.
2007-03-22 16:19:41 · answer #6 · answered by Rick 4 · 4⤊ 1⤋
I would definitely go for it.. But Bush & his cohorts will see to it that nothing like that ever beomes legal, funded with government support, or even popular in the publics eyes.
2007-03-22 16:21:49 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I would buy one. I might vote republican but I'm all for sticking it to OPEC. I'm sick of paying terrorists $2.53 per gallon.
2007-03-22 16:25:30 · answer #8 · answered by Mother 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋