No idea if this is a legit concept or not, but I do know that it is possible to build a car uglier than the Aztek.
It sounds interesting but to good to be true. It needs some type of special air for quick charging and there is no mention of how it is made etc. Also the estimated cost of the vehicle is missing. If they work, hey I’m all for it. But I’m not getting my hopes up.
Damn it! The design was Brilliant! If only they weren’t so blind!
I want a dymaxion omnidirectional transport device.
I read an article on compressed air cars last year, as promising as they are I don’t know why they aren’t getting more attention.
Maybe because if the tanks rust, split or have manufacturing flaws, the tanks will explode with considerable force?
You know–like in an accident?
Like this one?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77087&highlight=wreck+OR+accident
I’d be dead right now…
How come nobody’s designed a car that uses hampsters on those wheely-things to as the power source? Ever see those hampsters when they really get going? Just a handful of them should do the trick…
aren’t there a bunch of those on the sides of the highways???
You mean the Toyota Echo isn’t powered by hamsters on excercise wheels?
You do realize that they test new cars models for safety before they let them on the road? The tanks are made of carbon fiber, rustproof and quite tough.
I really doubt this is “for real”. They are advertising a “compressed air” vehicle, which basically makes it a rocket motor. And I don’t see how a rocket motor using just regular air can be all that efficient; you would have to compress it to incredible pressures just to get a reasonable distance, and at the pressures involved, I don’t care what they make the tank out of, that has got to be dangerous.
…as I think of little Pintos, all combusting…:rolleyes: :dubious:
Did you bother to look at how it works? It uses the air to push pistons.
I too would say it’s too good to be true.
The danger factor is pretty silly to tote out just yet. Gasoline is very dangerous and we’re all carrying 50 liters of it on the backs of our cars yet you don’t see people freaking out over that.
Compressed air could be dangerous if you’re standing right next to it when it goes off, but if it’s properly shielded the resulting explosion would probably be safer than, say, a few gallons of gas burning around your car.
But after reading the article I’m thinking, why bother compressing the gas in a bottle? If all it needs is a injection of air, just add a compressor to the engine intake system and let it compress air on the spot.
I keep thinking of the little toy cars I used to get in cereal boxes. The ones where you blow up balloons, and then attatch them to the back of the car, and let them go, and they scoot across the room while the balloon deflates.
And then I think of a six-lane highway, and all these plastic cars, trailing huge balloons behind them as they scoot along towards work. I imagine people standing by the side of the road, with signs saying “Will blow up balloons for food.” I see gas stations being replaced by huge balloon carts.
I am all for this idea. Sign me up.
Some buses and other vehicals are using compressed natural gas as a fuel so I don’t think the pressurized tanks are an issue.
It’s not quite the same thing, but I imagine you could probably pick up a Davis fairly cheaply. I’ve thought about buying the plans sold here and modifying them to build a Dymaxion.
Filthy Beast, didja read your link? Especially where it says
(emphasis mine) The other car was driven by the son of the mayor of Chicago and he was drunk at the time of the crash.
But it’s still essentially a rocket motor. Rockets have to push against something – in this case the pistons. All the original concerns still stand:
(1) How safe are the pressurized tanks?
(2) How efficient is pressurized air? Actually two parts:
(a) Consider how much energy it takes to pressurize that tank in the first place.
(b) Back to the rocket motor parallel: If pressurized air works fine, then how about using actual rocket fuel? You would need far less quantity to produce the same result, and it would doubtless be much more efficient.
I’m sorry but it still sounds like pie-in-the-sky. The electricity it takes to pressurize those (inefficient sounding) tanks comes from the regular old energy grid produced (for the most part) from good old fashioned pollution generating energy plants. Does it really gain you a thing over a regular vehicle?
A slight aside: Do not get the idea I am some sort of Luddite. I think it is very important that we find ways of significantly reducing the pollution produced by our motor vehicles. Increasing efficiency via electric hybrids looks to be a great step forward, but all-electrics have already failed to gain a foothold not only because of infrastructure problems, but also due to the same inefficiency problem I raise above – i.e., yes, the car doesn’t pollute, but how much does that plant producing the electricity pollute? And with any luck, fuel cells will prove to be the real winner of the lot, giving us efficiency and low pollution.
As usual, the claims for the efficiency and environmental soundness of the vehicle look only at the vehicle itself, not the means of providing the compressed air, which makes as much sense as saying, if you wear roller skates and grab onto the bumper of a passing car, you can get to work for pennies a day! Woohoo!
Of course the power to pressurize the air or charge the batteries is goping to come from a power plant, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad design. Where do you think that hydrogen for fuel cells is going to come from? It comes from fossil fuels or from electrolosis of water powered by fossil fuels. Having the pollution come from a single source like apower plant instead of millions of cars make it much easier to controll. As for burning rocket fuel with the compressed air, this is an idea I toyed with a few years ago. It occured to me that a steam engine with a rocket motor replacing the boiler and burner cold be very compact and efficient. However, the added complexity of having to store and refuel both air and fuel would make such a car impractical for everyday use.