I did a lot of research for a
blog about air cars, the most interesting things I learnt were:
- The air tanks at 300 Bar (4350psi) hold about the same amount of energy as gallon of gas.
- In terms of efficiency "According to the efcf, the cars can have a theoretical compression efficiency of 46% and a tank to wheel efficiency of up to 84%, the report concludes that given 100MJ of energy a hydrogen FCEV could travel 42km, an air car 46 and a Li-ion BEV an impressive 133km."
- Because of the huge pressure you have the same chicken and egg fill up infrastructure scenario as hydrogen to get longer than the 125km range of the tanks.
Check out the blog for the sources. I'd rather get triple the efficiency and range in an EV, but the potential cost for a mass produced one is nice, and the air tank versus battery replacement is a plus, but A well looked after battery pack (i.e. properly engineered production car) is going to last a long time, LiFePo4 batterys are looking in the 2000-3000 cycle range so I don't think battery replacement will be too big of an issue.
Cool technology but EVs are better
