The French engineer Guy Nègre, who works in the Formula One racing world, developed a car that runs on pressed air. The car contains a tank with air pressed at 300 bar and the principal is the same as a normal engine. Air moves the pistons in the engine that make the car move forward.
The only difference is that the car does not have any emission, other than plain air. The pressure of the air is about one and a half times the pressure of air in the tanks that divers have. Expectation is that the cheapest model of the car will cost about 4000 euros which is half the price of the current cheapest car that runs on petrol.
Owners can charge the car at home by use of electricity. It charges by adding air to the tanks like a drill hammer; it adds tiny bits of air to the tank until its completely full at a pressure of 300 bar. Believe it or not, this car is able to run 120 to 130 kilometer/hour. So this is not some dodgy toy. From the outside, the car looks like any car with normal brakes and tires.
Jan Peetermans is licensed to produce the car in Belgium. His estimate is that the car can run about 3000 kilometers with a completely filled tank. If the car brakes down, a normal garage is able to fix it.
Since 1991, people have been working on designing cars that run on air. In France, this year, the first test cars will be produced. Belgium will be releasing cars at the end of 2008. First a few small city cars will be created, but after that the goal is to build cars that will be fitted to hold seven people. But its also possible that small vans will be built with this technology.
Car producer Tata Motors, who are market leader in India with four million cars and a turnover of 5.5 billion dollar, just signed a contract with MDI. Together, they will be producing clean cars for India by means of this technology.
MDI is a small family company based in Carros, near the Mediterranean Nice and is being managed by the brothers Guy and Cyril Nègre. The brothers have been working for years to apply technologies that save the environment.
Alltogether, this technology promises a good step in the right way.
Airheads; run to the store!
You can watch how this technology works on the following videos:
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The French engineer Guy Nègre, who works in the Formula One racing world, developed a car that runs on pressed air. The car contains a tank with air pressed at 300 bar and the principal is the same as a normal engine. Air moves the pistons in the engine that make the car move forward.
