The Air Car

[Charlie99]

The air car continues to get good press even though nothing has ever been delivered. I was checking on the status of various alternative energy projects and found this article from August 8th on the air car.
106 mpg 'air car' creates buzz, questions - CNN.com

New York-based Zero Pollution Motors is the first firm to obtain a license from MDI to produce the cars in the United States, pledging to deliver the first models in 2010 at a price tag of less than $18,000.

and Tata Motors current status:

"The project is under progress. We do not yet have any timeframe for launch," said Debasis Ray, the head of corporate communications for Tata Motors.

This seems to be typical --- it will be available real soon now. "Real soon now" was the status a CNN article of January 2004.

The little, zero-pollution car, called the mini-cat, will the be first version to be sold commercially at a price tag of $6,500.
....... The first models are due to be rolled out by the end of 2004. That is when Guy Negre's dream of putting a non-polluting car on our roads will be put to the test.

Alternative energy may be the long term solution, but as we bring that online we need to simultaneously work on both conservation and on developing additional short term fossil fuel sources, such as the LNG deep water port off of Ft. Lauderdale that is being discussed in http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/fl...decision-natural-gas-port-off-lbts-close.html

 

[Thalassamania]

All this does is move the pollution to the power plant and the compressors with all the inefficiencies inherent in each of those steps. Think about the energy that will be needed to produce all that waste heat.

 

[Charlie99]

All this does is move the pollution to the power plant and the compressors with all the inefficiencies inherent in each of those steps. Think about the energy that will be needed to produce all that waste heat.

Next thing you're going to be telling me that hydrogen powered cars don't just run on water and generate O2 as a byproduct. Ya' mean that we have to use energy to make that hydrogen!

Long term we may be able to develop methods to have algae convert solar energy into hydrogen gas, but right now hydrogen for cars is mostly generated either by electrolysis (with the same drawback Thalassamania points out about air cars) or by cracking methane with a catalyst -- in other words, using fossil fuel as a feedstock to generate hydrogen.

All that comes out of the tailpipe is water, but the hydrogen doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Just like batteries on an electric car, or the compressed air of an air car, hydrogen is a energy STORAGE system and the original energy has to come from somewhere.

TANSTAAFL

 

[Thalassamania]

Next thing you're going to be telling me that hydrogen powered cars don't just run on water and generate O2 as a byproduct. Ya' mean that we have to use energy to make that hydrogen!

Long term we may be able to develop methods to have algae convert solar energy into hydrogen gas, but right now hydrogen for cars is mostly generated either by electrolysis (with the same drawback Thalassamania points out about air cars) or by cracking methane with a catalyst -- in other words, using fossil fuel as a feedstock to generate hydrogen.

All that comes out of the tailpipe is water, but the hydrogen doesn't just appear out of nowhere. Just like batteries on an electric car, or the compressed air of an air car, hydrogen is a energy STORAGE system and the original energy has to come from somewhere.

TANSTAAFL

There was an excellent issue of the Scientific American back in the early 1970s covering "the hydrogen economy." It's conclusion then, is still true today. A clean pollution free source of energy is what is needed (SA was banking on fusion back then). Without that all you are doing is moving the pollution source around in a shell game.

 

[Chris Hipp]

Yeah, these cars will only be "green" if we start building nuclear plants again. My uncle is obsessed with the MDI cars.

 

[300bar]

They only will be "green"if you got that perfect solution to the waist.
If not, we got a many million years problem,
maybe wind,solar and tidal energy will be better for the time being.