This car weighs less than your average Harley (motorcycle) ;-)
Not sure how much of a 'negative' that low-weight would be on US roads, but one would not want to meet a Hummer head-on, even a low speed...
The extraordinary efficiency is apparently due to both the low weight and 'synergy.' After all, even if light, it gets about 400% better gas mileage than the Harley motorcycle.
Looking at the details of this engine - IF - one is going to use a hybrid of compressed-air, along with some hydrocarbon (hopefully biodiesel) to raise the Carnot 'spread' (and there is surprising synergy in doing that !) ... then why not 'go the extra mile' and equip the compressor with a minimal pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) device, and thereby enrich the compressed air in oxygen ... this for (possibly) even more synergy ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption Michel Jullian wrote:
http://www.mdi.lu/eng/affiche_eng.php?page=onecats Compressed air technology (CAT). Saw a running prototype on French TV FR2 today, they are backed by the Indian auto manufacturer Tata Motors and say they will go into commercial production in 2009. It's not clear how they work in gas powered mode though, from what I heard it seems they burn it continuously (as opposed to explosively) in real time in a combustion chamber and run their compressed air engine on the expanding combustion gases instead of compressed air, or maybe they heat up air to expand it... In any case they announce extraordinarily low gas consumption 1.5 L/100km (157 MPG!), CO2 emission 30g/km and price 3500 Euros! (electrically fillable (plug in on board compressor = compressed air engine used in reverse) compressed air tank range 100km, petrol (presumably biofuels will be possible in the future) powered range 800km. Michel
