14 DAY TRIAL // Carbon dioxide emission gets a new bump from the vehicle industry that takes a major step into adding air among the alternative sources of fuel. Based on the idea of Guy Negre, founder and CEO of Luxembourg and France-based MDI SA company, who invented the car and had it developed in his French factories, the American company Zero Pollution Motors will move the concept of air cars to the North American continent.
The car will run mostly on compressed air, helped only by a hint of other combustible materials, on which it's not going to be choosy. It can be gasoline, alcohol or even regular vegetable oil. As if that was not enough, the car will sport the highest mpg (miles per gallon of fuel) ratio, leaving far behind competitors such as Toyota Prius. The developers estimate it is going to work at a rate of 106 mpg (2.65 liters of fuel / 100 km or about 38 km / 1 liter of fuel), more than twice Prius' rate of consumption.
Although not designed to be a racing car (with a top speed of only 35 mph or 56 km/h), it can travel for about 60 miles (nearly 100 km) with a full tank, which is more than enough for most consumers for a daily trip to work and back home, as well as for completing their daily chores. On highways, the compressed air vehicle (CAV) can attain interstate speeds for about 800 miles (nearly 1,290 km) running on the air constantly compressed by a small engine.
The car is going to be built on an off-the-shelf cheap technology and will be available at a cost of about $20,000 in about three years’ time. Early estimations foresee an amount of approximately 8,000 cars per year starting with 2011 and a number of factories in each state, based on the number of consumers present there. For example, there will be 17 air car manufacturing plants in California, 12 in Florida, eight in New York and four in Georgia. Tata company has already bought the rights to produce the CAV on a large scale in India as well.