“Its a bird, Its a plane..!” Chill guys, ‘Air Cars’ don’t fly.

Hi,

Road traffic world wide is responsible for almost half of our total CO2 emissions. That is the reason for many car manufacturers trying to build a cost efficient and eco-friendly car. Most of them have prototypes of furutistic cars (concept cars) that run on hydrogen, electricity, fuel cells or ethanol. Though a few manufacturers (read Japanese cars) have increased the efficiency of their engines for now, almost no company has released a green car for the market. Thats where Tata comes in. Read on…

Tata has recently signed a deal with a company called MDI (a company founded in Luxembourg, based in the south of France and with its Commercial Office in Barcelona ).

The deal says that Tata is going to mass produce a car that will run on compressed air.

Here is a picture that is moving from inbox, to inbox, world wide:

The car will be available in India by the end of next year, and will seat 6 people.

What really impressed me was that it could run 300km with out refills, and the engine oil is ‘vegetable oil’ (you don’t have to change it for at least 50,000 Km).

Compare the Onecat (that’s what they are calling it) to a Maruthi Suzuki 800, the most fuel economic car in India at the moment. The 800 gives you approximately 18 kilometres a litre, and you can go about 342 km on a full tank. How much do you pay for a full tank? The oil price will go up again before you can calculate that . Tata’s air car however can be refilled, they claim, for less that Rs.100. Now that is a good deal.

The exhaust from the air-car, will be cold air (0 to 15 degrees below zero).

What do we do with this cold air? Send it through the air conditioning system. Presto, we have a cool car. What’s more, the car is priced at Rs.3,50,000 approx, which roughly translates to a little more that $8000.

One point however: Tata will send in their Nano to crowd and pollute (the already dirty) streets of India, and then they’ll produce just 3000 air cars a year (as compensation?). Filthy hypocrites

Still they are the only company planning something on this scale, so, bravo!

Apparently, Tata going to introduce a bigger version of the car in the US in 2010 (10 people?) (I am happy because USA is the second largest CO2 emitting nation after China)

When Ratan Tata announced the Nano, I thought he was trying to do a ‘Henry’s Model T’ – and I thought it wasn’t going to work, but if the air car is successful, Tata Motors will go down in history as the car manufacturer who changed it all (along with MDI of course).

Guy Negre (MDI) is the engineer responsible for the development of the air car’s engine. I read a bit about how this engine works. The most obvious thing about it, is that the engine is not IC. It is a rotary type engine (found on certain Mazda sports cars). MDi’s engine is not one of a kind however. A zero pollution car manufacturer ‘e.Volution’ (based in France) is also marketing a similar car, intending to replace taxis in the highly polluted Mexico City. Back to the engine: The engine will probably use a triangular rotor, which is moved by air jets, to turn the wheels.

Hmmm. Although Mazda produces astounding speeds with a fuel version of the rotary, the MDI-Tata car cannot move at more that 105 km/hr.

One thing that struck me though, was this: where will people refill the car?

My idea?

Tata might set up refilling stations across the country, or make a deal with any one of the oil companies to distribute compressed air cylinders (made of carbon fibre, by the way) in already existing petrol stations.

If Tata decided to market this technology in a bigger way, we could be seeing air driven Land Rovers and Jaguars in the not-very-far-off future.

Hmmm, but all this is just speculation and what Tata will actually do is to be seen – soon.

Cheers,
Kaber

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