Taking a ride in the Air Car
A rear seat that faces backwards. Powered by compressed air. Name like the AirPOD and FlowAIR. A windshield that doubles as the door. There are a lot of hurdles that MDI's compressed air line of vehicles needs to jump before people will consider them "real" cars - or at least a solid alternative. At least one North American journalist was recently given the chance to see if riding in a prototype AirPOD is anything like a true car experience. The verdict: the vehicle is noisy, but maneuverable and takes some getting used to.
Granted, MDI representatives say that there is a lot of work to do on the AirPOD - sound insulation and a better suspension were named by Green Car Advisor - before the vehicle goes on sale. MDI (which stands for Motor Development International and is based in Luxembourg) is saying that the first production models will be ready in March or April for around $8,300. These will be fleet vehicles used at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris and Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Consumer sales - whether in India with Tata Motors or in the US with an as-yet-unnamed partner - will have to wait.
[Source: Green Car Advisor]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Throwback 5:03PM (12/31/2008)
Why are these called cars? Transportation appliance is more accurate.
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Charlie 7:12PM (12/31/2008)
They are in the same general category as NEV's --- "neighborhood electric vehicles". Kind of like high class golf carts. The difference is the electric NEV's are on sale and work. MDI has made great claims for performance of their vehicles, but have never delivered a single production car, even after announcements almost every year since 2000.
The big problem with compressed air is that it doesn't have very high energy density, so therefore the operating range of the vehicle is limited.
The MDI pattern is to simply move on, announce a new series of models with a new series of "production next year" announcements and hope everyone forgets the past.
The AirPod was only announced in October, with Air France to start tests in the spring. So for the prototype vehicles to be noisy and to run out of air while being shown to the Green Car Advisor journalist is not a good sign. It is consistent though with the only published test results, where the MDI vehicle ran out of compressed air after less than 5 miles.
http://tinyurl.com/mditestresults
I'll believe these announcements when MDI lets an independent journalist or car magazine road test the car. This they have never done in spite of going into production "in 12-24 months" for almost 10 years now.
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EV-1 10:06PM (12/31/2008)
The air motor concept shows two things :
1) The utter conservative, unimaginative, bogged down, deadlocked perception of what a vehicle motor "must" look like.
2) The disastrous ignorance on fundamental physics
involved in applications dealing with gaseous matter,
and the correlation between pressure and temperature.
The air motor is almost as stupid as the use of lots of electricity to produce hydrogen.
( And of course hydrogene would be used to be simply burned, which in turn would heat up the 'gas', called air, trapped inside a 'space', called cylinder, which in turn would increase the pressure ... until the heat would have dissipated and the energy then would be lost :
the only MECHANICAL energy that could be rescued would be a mere fraction of that which has to be stuffed into this cumbersome process.
- - - But then of course , all of you already knew all of that. )
God help us.
With Hope of a Happy New Year !
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