Comressed air powered car conversion

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Ryland

All because the big selling point is that they are able to sell a 500 pound, two passenger car with a top speed of 55mph for $8,000.... right.

I would rather just have the 500lb car part and omit the air powered.

[niky]

Originally Posted by Ryland

Why is compressed air still seen as a viable idea? even the companies who make them say it takes 65kwh of electricity to go 62 miles, that same amount of electricity can make my electric car go 260 miles of course the air powered car weighs 1/3 of what my electric car does so I imagine that if I had lithium batteries and narrower higher pressure tires like the air powered car does that I might be able to go well over 300 miles on that same electricity! all because the big selling point is that they are able to sell a 500 pound, two passenger car with a top speed of 55mph for $8,000.... right.

Probably the same reason people see hydrogen ICEs as an attractive solution. No matter how incredibly inefficient the conversion chain and hardware are, the car itself emits no pollutants during operation.

As long as the end product is "green", who cares if it's unrealistically energy wasteful?

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

I would rather just have the 500lb car part and omit the air powered.

I totally agree with you there, give me a 500 pound car that rides on LRR moped tires and seats two people and I'll be thrilled! good chance that it will also get well over 100 mpg if it's running on gasoline and be able to park pretty much any where... sounds kind of like a Peel Trident really... a reproduction of that car sells new for $16,000, 200 pounds and 118mpg with a top speed of 40mph.

[oil pan 4]

I have to admit electrics look a lot more appealing than air powered cars.

[Ryland]

What really gets me is that the 500 pound compressed air powered cars that are being built and shown in videos as proof that they work are costing over $.12 per mile just in electricity costs to compress the air, with $3.60 gasoline that's costing you the same as if you were getting 30mpg in that two person 500 pound car! then you have to factor in the cost of compressing that air, $3,000 looks to be the starting price for a compressor that can handle this kind of pressure and that is a home sized unit! so the price of your car that could blow away in a strong wind is costing $11,000 or more if you want to fill it at home so you're not charged a higher fee at a filling station.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Ryland

What really gets me is that the 500 pound compressed air powered cars that are being built and shown in videos as proof that they work are costing over $.12 per mile just in electricity costs to compress the air, with $3.60 gasoline that's costing you the same as if you were getting 30mpg in that two person 500 pound car!

so the price of your car that could blow away in a strong wind is costing $11,000 or more if you want to fill it at home so you're not charged a higher fee at a filling station.

Economics suck doesn't it.

The only way the air car would be remotely economical would be if there were a huge number of them near the ocean enough to justify a very large scale compression system with very high efficiency but even if you massively increase the efficiency of the compression the motor in the car still sucks and wouldn't do much better in an ideal world than $0.06 per mile. That after 100's of millions of dollars of sunk investment.