Thursday, July 12, 2007

Air Car

A car that not only has zero emissions but also cleans polluted air as you drive it? French man Guy Negre www.theaircar.com has developed an engine using compressed air which stores energy via air compressed into carbon fibre tanks and does away with the heavy, costly and environmentally unfriendly batteries of the electric car. He has teamed up with a company here in NZ www.indranet.co.nz which has developed the technology of replacing the 22 kg wiring system of a car with a single wire and operating it with radio signals. Sure it does need electricity to run the compressor but we are lucky in NZ that because of our hydro lakes we have virtually pollution free generation and of course compressed air is already available in all our service stations. The company has already signed up Tata motors, a large car and bus manufacturer in India, and is looking for other countries to come aboard. Love to have one here but my meagre savings won't run to a manufacturing plant!
Just had the mother of all storms with 200km winds and 6 metre swells. Our power was down for two days but we got off lightly compared to some with severe flooding and roofs missing. It reminded me of the time when the kids were young and we had no power and relied on the woodstove and read and played games by the light of the gently hissing kerosene lanterns. Them were the days!

4 comments:

Indeterminacy said...

I think now that it's really become urgent, there will be more solutions like this. Probably in 20 years time, no one will want oil anymore. thanks for posting this - it's the first I've heard about it.

chook said...

It's amazing and heartening that in a few years the words global warming have become common everyday language. Even if the scientists are wrong, what we do to try and fix it is only going to be good for us If we are successful perhaps peace isn't that far away!

Carl Lenox said...

Thanks for commenting on my blog the other day. I added a comment on the "air car" concept after the original post. I'm not too bullish on this because compressing air is extraordinarily energy intensive. Anyway, more details in my post.

Anonymous said...

Well said.