India gets Air Car
Reply With Quote"...all glue construction..."
With all this rain lately, that might be sort of fun to watch...
"...all glue construction..."
With all this rain lately, that might be sort of fun to watch...
".....MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi....."
Or, you could have your Miata converted like this Mini Cooper
05 MX-5 Mazdaspeed #1024 Titanium Gray Mica
Doesn't the Elise use something similar?Originally Posted by Treibenschnell
Weird.
That door design is scary. I hope you don't have front and rear seat passengers both trying to exit in a hurry...
Iain
"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
I know that a lot of the hellicopters are held together by Hot Bonding(i.e. Glue). I used to work for a company that built the fuselages for Bell.
05 MX-5 Mazdaspeed #1024 Titanium Gray Mica
The big benefit I see to the compressed air over electric is the flexible filling options. You get the ability electric cars have by being able to "charge" each night in the garage, but you still retain the convenience of a gas car by being able to fill up the air quickly from a filling station.
Yeah... I really don't care about the car... I just want the engine technology.
And here I thought it was going to be a flying car.
09 Lexus RX350
.... no Miata
I guess you would'nt have to worry about how to fill up that flat tire.
The technology has been around for a long time. The engine is the same as a Steam engine, just using air to propel it instead of steam. You would'nt even need a transmission on the vehicle itself, just some method of diverting the direction of air like they did on the old steam cars. The pressure that it talks about is 4350 PSI, which is about 1000 psi more than a typical tank of aviators breathing oxygen. :!
05 MX-5 Mazdaspeed #1024 Titanium Gray Mica
That would be an AerocarAnd here I thought it was going to be a flying car.
05 MX-5 Mazdaspeed #1024 Titanium Gray Mica
Except that your average filling station compressor is lucky to hit 100 psi, let alone 4350 psi.
This technology still suffers from the same lack of infrastructure that plagues most other alternative fuel technologies.
Iain
"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Yep, but unless we can run off of sun or water, any gas replacement is going to require infrastructure.Except that your average filling station compressor is lucky to hit 100 psi, let alone 4350 psi.
This technology still suffers from the same lack of infrastructure that plagues most other alternative fuel technologies.
My Great Uncle(now deceased), told me of a car that ran off of flash steam in the 1950's.
By modifying a V8 internal combustion engine of the day, this guy had been driving around his new invention of a flash steam car. He had managed to install tiny screens in between the cylinder head and block and had them charged at a precise moment, kind of like a spark plug. Water would spray on the screens and be heated into steam inside the cylinders. Of course, running the engine also charged the generator which in turn caused it to be able to run on water.
One of the oil companies supposedly paid him off to shut him up.
If it did actually happen, I guess you could eliminate the need for the radiator, unless you were using it to condense the water for reuse.
05 MX-5 Mazdaspeed #1024 Titanium Gray Mica
paintball stores charge $1 ever 1000psi... i fill ripped off".....MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi....."
correct. the elise/exiege do not have welds its all glue.
Watch the documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car.
Yeah, I know Ed Begley Jr. is in it but it raises some interesting point and theories of why Alternative Fuel Vehicles, especially electric powered are a long time in coming.
Not only do the large oil companies block it but also the large automotive parts suppliers also have a tremendous amount to lose. Without an internal combustion engine, there is little need for many replacement parts, oil pumps, water pumps, etc...
The infrastructure is very doable. This country has surmounted many infrastructure issues including the National Highway System and the logistics of WWII.
That's not really a valid argument. We sell both diesel and electric powered machines, and our aftermarket parts sales are just as robust for the electric machines as they are for the diesel ones. Electric motors are far from zero maintenance.
Cost is the number one, super sized, grandaddy-of-them-all reason that alternative fuels haven't been developed any further than they currently have. Without huge government subsidies and incentives alternative fuel research wouldn't even be where it is today, and these fuels will never be a viable alternative to our current fossil fuel-powered transportation system until they are cost competitive.
Alternative fuels that require a different infrastructure (compressed air, hydrogen, etc.) will not only have to be cost competitive, they'll have to be substantially cheaper than current technology to provide an incentive for the capital development required to create that infrastructure.
That day is coming, but it's a lot further off than you think it is.
Last edited by altiain; 06-28-2007 at 01:43 PM.
Iain
"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
What if the air tank ruptures in an accident? Wouldn't that make one hell of an explosion?
Posting Permissions
