AIR COMPRESSED CAR Yes, it could.

You could compress the air at your house using an air compressor, fill a compressed-air tank in the car, and the car could run off of it. You could use an engine very similar to a steam engine (using pressurized air instead of pressurized steam) to convert the compressed air to rotational energy. Car Image Gallery The main problem you would have is the size of the "gas tank" you would need to get any kind of reasonable range. You would need a LOT of compressed air to take a car very far. An alternative would be to use a liquefied gas like liquid nitrogen. You can think of liquid nitrogen as air that has been compressed so much it has liquefied. Liquid nitrogen is much denser than compressed air, so you could store enough in a car to give it reasonable range. You could then fill up at the liquid-nitrogen station. A compressed air car would generate no pollution while you are driving. However, the power plant that produces the electricity that compresses the air (or liquifies the nitrogen, for that matter) is probably generating pollution from the coal or oil it is burning. Power plants are relatively clean and very efficient compared to car engines, so this is not a bad trade-off. Still, it's important to compare apples to apples. Another thing that would be interesting to figure out is the efficiency of a liquid-nitrogen engine. If you burngasoline in a car engine, only about 20 percent of it powers the wheels. The rest creates wasted heat. It would be interesting to see how efficient a power plant is, plus how efficient a nitrogen liquefier is, plus how efficient a liquid-nitrogen engine is -- that would tell you whether you were creating a technology that is better or worse than the gasoline engine in terms of efficiency. Tata Motors to introduce Air Car Is it the next big thing? by ARUN PRABHUDESAI on JULY 1, 2008 Tata Motors is taking giant strides and making history for itself. First the Landrover-Jaguar deal, then the worlds cheapest car and now it is also set to introduce the car that runs on air, compressed air to be specific. With fuel prices touching nearly $150 per barrel, it is about time we heard some breakthrough! Indias largest automaker Tata Motors is set to start producing the worlds first commercial air-powered vehicle. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Ngre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engines pistons.Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008. The Air Car, called the MiniCAT could cost around Rs. 3,50,000 ($ 8177) in India and would have a range of around 300 km between refuels. The cost of a refill would be about Rs. 85 ($ 2). Tata motors also plans to launch the worlds cheapest car, Tata Nano priced famously at One lakh rupees by October.

The MiniCAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fiberglass powered by compressed air. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc. There are no keys just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 105 kmph. Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 100 rupees, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometers. As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000Km.] The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power. How the Air Car Works Gasoline is already the fuel of the past. It might not seem that way as you fill up on your way to work, but the petroleum used to make it is gradually running out. It also pollutes air that's becoming increasingly unhealthy to breathe, and people no longer want to pay the high prices that oil companies are charging for it. Automobile manufacturers know all of this and have spent lots of time and money to find and develop the fuel of the future. The search is on, but what will this fuel of the future be? Ready-made fuels like petroleum are becoming more difficult to find and automobile manufacturers are turning to greener energy sources like batteries. These batteries can be charged with energy and placed in a car where that energy can be released. As good as that idea might seem, some manufacturers think air could become an even better energy source. Air? At first glance, the idea of running a car on air seems almost too good to be true. If we can use air as fuel, why think about using anything else? Air is all around us. Air never runs out. Air is nonpolluting. Best of all, air is free. Unfortunately, air alone can't be used as a fuel. First, energy has to be stored in it by squeezing the air tightly using a mechanical air compressor. Once the compressed air is released, it expands. This expanding air can be used, for example, to drive the pistons that power an engine. The idea of using compressed air to power a vehicle isn't new: Early prototypes of an airpowered vehicle go back to the middle of the 19th century, even before the invention of the internal combustion engine. At least one manufacturer thinks that it's ready to sell air cars to the American public. If all goes well, these cars could be available in the United States relatively soon [source: Sullivan]. Over
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the next few pages, we'll look at this technology, the reasons you may want to use it -- and a few reasons you might not. How Compressed Air Can Fuel a Car The laws of physics dictate that uncontained gases will fill any given space. The easiest way to see this in action is to inflate a balloon. The elastic skin of the balloon holds the air tightly inside, but the moment you use a pin to create a hole in the balloon's surface, the air expands outward with so much energy that the balloon explodes. Compressing a gas into a small space is a way to store energy. When the gas expands again, that energy is released to do work. That's the basic principle behind what makes an air car go. The first air cars will have air compressors built into them. After a brisk drive, you'll be able to take the car home, put it into the garage and plug in the compressor. The compressor will use air from around the car to refill the compressed air tank. Unfortunately, this is a rather slow method of refueling and will probably take up to two hours for a complete refill. If the idea of an air car catches on, air refueling stations will become available at ordinary gas stations, where the tank can be refilled much more rapidly with air that's already been compressed. Filling your tank at the pump will probably take about three minutes [source: Cornell]. The first air cars will almost certainly use the Compressed Air Engine (CAE) developed by the French company, Motor Development International (MDI). Air cars using this engine will have tanks that will probably hold about 3,200 cubic feet (90.6 kiloliters) of compressed air. The vehicle's accelerator operates a valve on its tank that allows air to be released into a pipe and then into the engine, where the pressure of the air's expansion will push against the pistons and turn the crankshaft. This will produce enough power for speeds of about 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour. When the air car surpasses that speed, a motor will kick in to operate the in-car air compressor so it can compress more air on the fly and provide extra power to the engine. The air is also heated as it hits the engine, increasing its volume to allow the car to move faster [source: Cornell]. Air Car Advantages One major advantage of using compressed air to power a car's engine is that a pure compressed air vehicle produces no pollution at the tailpipe. More specifically, the compressed air cars we're likely to see in the near future won't pollute at all until they reach speeds exceeding 35 miles per hour. That's when the car's internal air compressor will kick in to achieve extra speed. The motor that runs this air compressor will require fuel that'll produce a small amount of air pollution. Some fuel (you can use eco-friendly biofuels or fossil fuels) will also be used to heat the air as it emerges from the tank. The newest compressed air engines also offer drivers the option of using fossil fuels or biofuels to heat the air as it enters the engine. Nonetheless, this technology represents a marked improvement over cars powered by internal combustion engines that produce significant amounts of pollution at any speed. Air cars are also designed to be lighter than conventional cars. The aluminum construction of these vehicles will keep their weight under 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms), which is essential to making these vehicles fuel efficient and will help them go faster for longer periods of time. Another advantage of air cars is that the fuel should be remarkably cheap, an important consideration in this era of volatile gas prices. Some estimates say that the cars will get the
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equivalent of 106 miles (171 kilometers) per gallon, although compressed air will probably not be sold by the gallon. A more meaningful estimate is that it may take as little as $2 worth of electricity to fill the compressed air tank, though you'll also need gasoline to power the electric motor that compresses air while driving [source: Cornell]. The vehicles themselves also will be relatively cheap. Zero Pollution Motors, which plans to release the first air cars in the United States and estimates a sticker price of about $17,800, which would make these cars affordable to budget-conscious American buyers [source: Max]. Air Car Disadvantages While an air car produces no pollution running on already compressed air in its tank, pollution is nonetheless produced when the air is compressed, both while the car is moving and while it's being refueled. As we mentioned earlier, the vehicle's air compressor will probably run ongasoline, and this gas will produce pollution when burned. The air compressor at the gas station will probably be powered byelectricity. The production of that electricity may or may not pollute, depending on how that electricity is generated. For example, coal-powered electricity could produce substantial amounts of pollution. Cleaner sources of electricity, such as nuclear power or hydropower, will result in far less pollution. According to the Web site Gas 2.0, an air car in the United States would create about .176 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per mile based on the average mix of electric power sources during refueling. By comparison, a Toyota Prius Hybrid, which combines a batterypowered electric motor with an internal combustion engine, generates about 0.34 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile. So, while the air car is not quite pollution free, it still represents an improvement over one of the most popular hybrid cars on the market [source: Nuccitelli]. Distance could also become a disadvantage, depending on your travel habits. The distance that an air car can cover without refueling is crucial because very few filling stations will have compressed air pumps available at first. If you only plan to use your air car for short commutes -distances less than 100 miles --will be fine. However, the one-to-two hour wait for the car's builtin air compressor to compress a tank full of air could become a problem on cross-country trips. Zero Pollution Motors -- the American arm of MDI and the company likeliest to produce the first air car for the U.S. market -- aims to have a car available soon able to travel between 800 and 1,000 miles on one tank of air plus 8 gallons of gas [source: Cornell]. Early prototypes, however, have traveled distances closer to 120 miles -- good enough for your daily commute, but not quite adequate for longer trips [source: Motavalli]. What will happen if an air car suffers damage in an accident? After all, compressed air tanks can be dangerous. To reduce this danger, the air tanks are made of carbon fiber and are designed to crack, rather than shatter, in a crash. This crack would allow the "fuel" to escape harmlessly into the surrounding air. Manufacturers feared that air escaping from one end of the tank could produce a rocket-like effect and propel the car on a jet of air. The valve on the cars' fuel tanks has been placed on the side to minimize this effect. Despite these precautions, there is some concern that the air cars' lightweight construction might make it difficult for them to pass stringent American safety requirements and that this could hold up the arrival of air cars in the U.S. marketplace. Other factors have come to the forefront as well, and we'll learn about those next.
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Air Cars in the Marketplace India's Tata Motors will likely produce the first air car in the marketplace in the next few years. Tata Motors' air car will also use the CAE engine. Although Tata announced in August 2008 that they aren't quite ready to roll out their air cars for mass production, Zero Pollution Motors still plans to produce a similar vehicle in the United States. Known collectively as the FlowAIR, these cars will cost about $17,800. The company, based in New Paltz, N.Y., says that it will start taking reservations in mid-2009 for vehicle deliveries in 2010. The company plans to roll out 10,000 air cars in the first year of production [source: Max]. MDI also recently unveiled the joystick-driven AirPod, the newest addition to its air car arsenal. Although the AirPod generates a top speed of only 43 mph, it's also extremely light and generates zero emissions. Major automobile makers are watching the air car market with interest. If the first models catch on with consumers, they'll likely develop their own air car models. At present, a few smaller companies are planning to bring air cars to the market in the wake of the MDI-based vehicles. These include: K'Airmobiles -- French company K'Air Energy has built prototypes of an air-fueled bicycle and light road vehicle based on the K'air air compression engine [source: K'air] Air Car Factories SA -- This Spanish company has an air car engine currently in development. The company's owner is currently involved in a dispute with former employer MDI over the rights to the technology [source: MDI]. Initially, the MDI cars will be the only air vehicles on the market. However, MDI has reportedly licensed the technology to manufacturers in a dozen different countries, so air cars should be available around the world soon. Zero Pollution compressed Air Car set for U.S. launch in 2010 February 29, 2008 The Zero-Pollution MDI Air Car, invented in France and licensed by Tata Motors in India, is coming to American shores. Zero Pollution Motors have announced they will begin taking reservations for the first U.S. deliveries in the next couple of months, but it will be 2010 before Americans get their first taste of the ingenious compressed-air motor, which runs to 35mph entirely on air, or uses a trickle of petrol to heat and compress more air to reach higher speeds up to 90mph. It'll cost next to nothing to run (how do 30,000km service intervals sound?), have a range of up to 1000 miles, and retail for well under US$20,000. We've written before about the promising potential of compressed air as the next energy storage medium for road cars, and it seems the concept is starting to gather some serious momentum. After signing a mass-production agreement with India's largest auto manufacturer, Zero Pollution has announced the beginning of a marketing push into the U.S.A. Pre-orders for the air car will be taken in early 2008 on the Zero Pollution website, and initial U.S. deliveries for a 6-seater, 4-door, 75 hp, dual-energy MDI Air Car are anticipated for 2010. The air car has also been one of the first entries in the multi-million dollarAutomotive XPrize competition, which aims to reward innovators and inspire a new generation of super-efficient, 100mph+ vehicles to help free mankind from its oil addiction.
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Check out our original look at the air car for more information on the amazing multifunction compressed air engine, as well as more information about the air car's development. Comments Bob Lou M - July 8, 2009 @ 08:42 am PDT Well look it is coming to this country this coming year. a car to run on compress air, and you can tell the oil compies to take a hike and keep all that gas money in your saving account. It is about time. So read it an rejoice. This has been around for a long time. Enrico Granse Facebook User - December 23, 2009 @ 06:40 am PST I'm cheerfully optimistic about these cars! But realistically I know its going to be difficult to deal with the oil conglomerates. Even if the car makes it to the market, they will probably find ways to hinder or destroy the Air car. Probably by preventing gas stations from purchasing the air compressing stations. IMO the hybrids were an acceptable compromise to their profits, because either way we are stuck using oil. *Crosses fingers hoping I'm wrong Dan Allen - January 18, 2010 @ 01:39 pm PST I will believe this when I see it. This car has been promised for years now, and as I believe compressed air tech will never make it, I think after all the beat ups that it will never happen! The compression required is near impossible to obtain economically. A standard garage air compressor delivering 160 psi uses heaps of electricity, imagine what a compressor pumping out 1400 psi would cost to run and maintain, makes no sense at all. Ernest John Langmaid - January 20, 2010 @ 08:59 pm PST Dan Allen: Makes no sense at all??? You can buy a "personal" 5,000 psi compressor for around $3K for filling SCUBA tanks (to around 3,000 psi) that you can stick in your garage. This technology has been around for decades. Mark P. Mitsch - January 28, 2010 @ 07:18 am PST Dan, I have been selling commercial air compressors from my automotive machinery company for years, and know what I am talking about. Although you can put a lot of pressure in to a small scuba tank, (again with enormous energy loss through heat) try doing that quickly and cheaply in tanks of the size fitted to these cars. It's laughable! Ernest John Langmaid - April 9, 2010 @ 10:33 pm PDT You forgot to mention that this and the bigger model were originally scheduled for release 3 years ago now! It wont happen. Ernest John Langmaid - April 9, 2010 @ 10:37 pm PDT My full sized Compressed Natural Gas van stores it's fuel at 3000 psi, most systems are 3600 psi and at $2/gas gallon equivalent I would describe it as economically viable. Now if we could stop fracturing shale for the gas and ramp up biogas production we would a little better off, it's always
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something though isn't it which I guess is a lot of what this site is about. I like the little air cars and late or not they look like a welcome break from oil. Keith Aderholdt - April 10, 2010 @ 12:02 pm PDT A vapor, I mean airware. 2010 is now. Where is my air car? Only links to Zero Pollution evaporated. nehopsa - April 10, 2010 @ 03:40 pm PDT www.zeropollutionmotors.us = "404 not found"... that doesn't bode well if they can't even afford to pay the $99 a year to keep a static webpage going. matthew.rings - April 11, 2010 @ 09:45 pm PDT When will the masses wise up and start applying what they already know? It takes energy to do work. Moving people's fat arsses and empty heads around takes energy. It doesn't come free. The costs of compressing are is not free, never was and still isn't. For some reason people insist on believing that there is a free ride or were just one breakthrough away from solving our energy needs. With the dream of a break through coming any day now , we continue to fill the atmosphere with tonnes upon tonnes of co2 at an ever excelerating rate. We are globally betting the planet that we are smarter than the evidence shows. offthegrid - April 12, 2010 @ 08:51 am PDT Regarding range: we have a coffee can-sized micro turbine (that runs on gas, ethanol, E85, diesel and CNG). It sips fuel, is scalable to the size of vehicle and delivers very high electrical power (for its size/weight) either directly or through a battery pack. BTW, it operates at about 60dB. This could be the perfect range extender for any of these vehicles since you can effectively charge on the fly; with range limited only by the size of fuel tank or the level of comfort of ones backside. The X-Prize is great but let's be honest, if you are going to pay good money for a car you want it to be able to take you anywhere you want to go.... Muraculous - April 14, 2010 @ 09:48 am PDT Compressed air is just another way to store energy. Someone is burning coal to make electricity to compress the air. Air heats up a lot when compressed (PV=nRT) and all that energy is wasted. Then when the air is used, it cools and any water will ice the engine, so it needs to be heated. This is another dumb idea to get people who don't understand physics all excited. PizzaEater - April 15, 2010 @ 01:16 pm PDT I saw this car on Modern Marvels. I want one, I want one, I want one. This is the only car I would buy brand new. Donna Lusciousdc Sayles-Corbin - May 6, 2010 @ 09:02 am PDT The air compressors could eventually be run by solar, wind, methane or any number of alternative energy sources. Then it would be truly green technology. For commuting to work and running errand around town, this would be perfect. Steven Iverson - May 15, 2010 @ 02:35 pm PDT Some comments here correctly point out that compressed air is merely stored energy and that still may require use of fossil fuels to run the compressor.
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There are two problems with that critique: (1) Be moving the power generation to a place outside the vehicle, you are able to use more efficient forms of power generators than a 300 pound internal combustion engine. You can use hydro, wind, solar, and more efficient fossil fuel generation. (1) As solar energy reaches parity in cost with fossil fuels, one can generate the electricity needed to run the compressors in a clean way. The compressed air will be just like a battery and, like a battery, be chargeable from clean solar power. (This same argument will apply to plug-in hybrids, although those will have a non-green cost factor for recycling the batteries). My back of the envelope calculations indicate that an "average" driver in a large city in the USA consumes about the same amount of energy each day in their car as they do in all other use of electricity (your mileage may vary, pun intended). That means that we should install as many solar panels for charging batteries and/or compressed air tanks to provide energy to move private vehicles in cities. Those solar panels should be available where the car is at the time it needs to be charges. I.e., at the work place. Dennis Allard - July 4, 2010 @ 09:21 pm PDT This is why I am less and less of an environmentalist each year. This car "uses a trickle of petrol to heat and compress more air..." You can't extract a small amount of energy from gasoline and make it into a large amount of energy. That would mean energy was created from nothing. It's called conservation of energy, also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics. This is to all you environmentalists out there who blame oil companies for the suppression of "alternative technologies:" learn the difference between a perpetual motion scam and a vehicle that really works. Otherwise, your cause has the same credibility as witch craft. TANSTAAFL - January 21, 2011 @ 01:26 pm PST This car will never see the light of day in the US. The oil companies will do everything in their power to keep it from reaching our shores. You can bet on that. Did you try going to the companies web site? It's suspended. Hmmmmm! George Worthington - March 10, 2011 @ 07:55 am PST et godt alternativ" til el-bil..mske bedre Facebook User - March 11, 2011 @ 09:36 am PST Just like "Hydrogen Fuel", this is another misleading confusion between an energy storage and transfer medium and an energy source. In making compressed air, there is a LOT of energy lost. It's in the way air compresses. Batteries are a much more efficient and safe means of storing energy for use in mobile applications like vehicles and hand drills, etc. The folks suggesting this are either unlearned, mislead, or running a scam. I hope it's jsut that they don't know any better. Compressed air can come from oil, coal, solar, wind, nuclear, etc JUST LIKE BATTERIES. It is NOT a conspiracy keeping the less efficient energy storage off the road. I'm a mechanical engineer and have run tests on things lie this. It's physics, not politics. Facebook User - March 28, 2011 @ 10:39 am PDT
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It is now 2011--WHERE IS the compressed air car promised by Zero Pollution Motors for 2010? Or, the French car already sold for 5 years in France and India, etc. by Mediani? Or, the Indian Tata Nano? Gas is so high now in the US, it's going up further because of the Middle East revolts, why does no one sell the fuelless compressed air cars in the US? Facebook User - March 30, 2011 @ 09:30 pm PDT Sorry maybe i'm not very possitive but ever hearing an aircar motorsound? That sound doesn't make a lot of succes to buy these cars! Q: Why not using a combination of batteries, PV-panels, comprss air and bio-fuel? Why not using combined windmills to make not only electricity but also storing compressed air? Very usefull as buffer making extra electricity whith less wind? Why does it all takes so long to get things done? (money) Jos Maertens - April 2, 2011 @ 12:24 am PDT A compressed air vehicle. Is that like riding a whoopee cushion? teeduke - April 6, 2011 @ 01:39 pm PDT A micro turbine just has a higher horsepower to weight ratio than a piston engine, but for the same horsepower, is less efficient. You're also in trouble if the air car leaks all the air out when you went drove some where. Got a big air compressor handy? It is important to realize that the way we power our vehicles today is based on the legacy of energy discoveries of the 1800s. Oil was first taken out of the ground in Pennsylvania in the 1860s. When the automobile industry came into being some four decades later, petroleum was the first candidate for the energy source. Even though the quintessential American inventor Thomas Edison did build an electric car, electricity was not as wide spread as it soon would be, so the power of the Rockefeller oil cartel won the day.

Today we are using the energy source discovered 150 years ago to get us to work and to the grocery store. Do we use candles to light our homes? Do we use tubes to power our radios and TVs? Do we cool our houses with blocks of ice? No, no and no! So why do we continue to blindly define transportation energy on an 150 year old discovery that we know is causing climate change, funding terrorism and is in finite supply?

In the last few decades, Western Science has, as it has penetrated ever smaller particles, come to the conclusion that everything is energy. Taking a look at energy from this point of view it strikes me as incredibly narrow to think of fuel, or energy as fossil fuel. That is just a small slice of what is available. If everything is energy then lets look elsewhere, everywhere.

There are people around the world who are doing just that. A French company called MDI has partnered with an Indian company Tata Motors, to bring to market a car that runs on compressed air. Thats right, air. The power source is air and the waste product is air. A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, Guy Negre, the founder of MDI, has developed a compressed air engine that has the potential for being one of the great inventions of this century. Negress compressed air car can travel 120 miles between refueling. That is significant because more than 50% of Americans live 20 miles or less from work, and the average daily mileage per car is less than 40 miles a day. The cost to operate is low, about one dollar per hundred miles. The compressed air only car will need to go to compressed air fueling stations for a compressed air refill. Once these retrofitted gas stations are in place, a refueling will take 3 minutes, will cost about $2 and will allow the driver to drive 125-175 before needing to refuel. Alternatively, there are engines being developed that either switch over to electric or gas power allowing the car to continue to be driven, while at the same time operating the compressor to refill the tank with compressed air. This model car could be driven from L.A. to New York on a single tank of gas. Because there is no heat generating combustion in the engine, changing the oil, vegetable oil at that, needs to be done only once every 30,000 miles. What is not to like about this? Cars that are pollution free, basically petroleum free, low cost to purchase [estimates are less than $20,000], low cost to operate and capable of handling most of our driving needs. Sure if you want to pull a boat or rumble around in a big SUV or pick up this vehicle is not for you, but for commuting and running errands, the overwhelming amount of vehicular use in the U.S., the compressed air car is just fine. What the compressed air car points to is the fact that humanity has the technological capability of solving our energy problems as they relate to transportation. Combined with the coming electric cars in the next few years, it is possible that by 2020 we could primarily be free of our reliance on the internal combustion engine. Now that is the potential and clear possibility. Do we have the social and political fortitude to make this a reality? Will our government see the clear opportunity or will it succumb to historical habit and inertia and cave to the well funded industry lobbying efforts that have influenced energy and transportation policy for the last 100 years? The presidential candidates in 2008 could campaign on an Energy Independence by 2015 platform, calling for government supported mass production of electric cars, compressed air cars and basically create a nation-wide Apollo project for the replacement of the internal combustion engine in a decade. The technology is soon to be in place, so it is up to us, all of us, to make utilize the compressed air car and all such emerging new technologies to make it a reality.

The Air Car - zero pollution and very low running costs
Many respected engineers have been trying for years to bring a compressed air car to market, believing strongly that compressed air can power a viable "zero pollution" car. Now the first commercial compressed air car is on the verge of production and beginning to attract a lot of attention, and with a recently signed partnership withTata, Indias largest automotive manufacturer, the prospects of very cost-effective mass production are now a distinct possibility. The MiniC.A.T is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fibreglass. The heart of the electronic and communication system on the car is a computer offering an array of information reports that extends well beyond the speed of the vehicle, and is built to integrate with

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external systems and almost anything you could dream of, starting with voice recognition, internet connectivity, GSM telephone connectivity, a GPS guidance system, fleet management systems, emergency systems, and of course every form of digital entertainment. The engine is fascinating, as is and therevolutionary electrical system that uses just one cable and so is the vehicles wireless control system. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc There are no keys just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. Most importantly, it is incredibly cost-efficient to run according to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 68 mph. Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 1.5 Euros, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometres. As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000 Km. The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0 - 15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power. How does it work? 90m3 of compressed air is stored in fibre tanks. The expansion of this air pushes the pistons and creates movement. The atmospheric temperature is used to re-heat the engine and increase the road coverage. The air conditioning system makes use of the expelled cold air. Due to the absence of combustion and the fact there is no pollution, the oil change is only necessary every 31.000 miles. At the moment, four models have been made: a car, a taxi (5 passengers), a Pick-Up truck and a van. The final selling price will be approximately 5.500 pounds. The Company "Moteur Development International" (MDI) is a company founded in Luxembourg, based in the south of France and with its Commercial Office in Barcelona. MDI has researched and developed the Air Car over 10 years and the technology is protected by more than 30 International patents and MDI is actively seeking licensees, with according to the company, 50 factories in Europe, America and Asia signed already. The Factory It is predicted that the factory will produce 3.000 cars each year, with 70 staff working only one 8hour shift a day. If there were 3 shifts some 9.000 cars could be produced a year. The Tata Agreement Tata Motors is India's largest automobile company, with revenues of US$ 5.5 billion in 2005-06. With over 4 million Tata vehicles on Indian roads, it is the leader in commercial vehicles and the second largest in passenger vehicles. It is also the world's fifth largest medium and heavy truck manufacturer and the second largest heavy bus manufacturer.

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Tata has signed an agreement with MDI for application in India of MDIs engine technology, and believes the engine is viable its press statement described it as efficient, cost-effective, scalable, and capable of other applications such as power generation. The agreement between Tata Motors and MDI envisages Tatas supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India. MDI is a small, family-controlled company located at Carros, near Nice (Southern France) where Guy and Cyril Negre and their technical team have developed the engine technology and the technologically advanced car it powers.

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