Air Car Revisited

Well, the subject is revisited anyway, the visit to the air car factory was kind of a blowout ...

K1W1 and I got together for a visit to the air car factory in Nice one morning after the Monaco show. As we drove into the parking area in front of the rather imposing building in an industrial park on the outskirts of town we saw several shiny new vehicles parked in front of the building with several more visible behind the showroom windows.

There was a van parked in front of the building that had two large fiber wound compressed gas cylinders on the floor of the bed and a shutoff valve with what appeared to be the adjusting knob of an air reducer on the floor next to the driver's seat.

H'mmm we thought, maybe there is more than hot air to these guys and we were ready to be proven a pair of poorly informed skeptics. We really did walk in the door with open minds, ready to be shown wrong in our criticism of the project.

That frame of mind didn't last long. The showroom had 4 engines on stands, one was the air motor generator shown in the websites. It was mounted on a platform and hooked up to a half dozen 1500W bulbs. The air supply hose was disconnected and it looked like it had been some time since it was run.

One of the other engines was an aero conversion of an automotive spark ignition engine. Another "engine" appeared to be a crankcase casting with an integral gearbox possibly intended to show some version of an air driven automotive powerplant. There was nothing on the casting to indicate it had ever been assembled as a working unit. The last engine was the stripped carcass of a dusty old F1 engine seemingly placed to fill an empty corner.

A wall mounted TV screen above the airmotor(?) casting showed some people standing around a CNC machine doing nothing in particular other than chatting with each other. An air powered vehicle was shown putting around the car park turning in circles. At least it appeared to be air powered, the exhaust showed puffs of condensation consistent with the exhaust of a compressed air motor or reciprocating steam engine operated on air.

We watched the video for a bit and when a gentleman approached us we attempted to ask a few questions. The language barrier was insurmountable and the fellow went off to find an English speaking representative to help us. When the English speaker showed up he was very evasive. He stated that visitors are not normally entertained in the morning and technical specifications were only released to investors.

After explaining that we were interested in learning about the engines for potential marine use, and repeatedly asking for very simple information such as how much power output and how much air consumption for the generator demonstrator on display our guide telephoned someone else to obtain this information. No drawings, brochures, or other material was available to us. I got some figures for air consumption for the generator and will crunch the numbers when I have a few moments - I just got back this morning so haven't had time to do much other than my expense report ... gotta keep my priorities straight.

We really did go to the factory with open minds, and were hoping to be shown a viable application of airpower technology. Unfortunately we left with the feeling that our first impressions were absolutely correct.

"What about those vehicles then..?"

Just some shiny FRP Eurobox looking things, nothing particularly good or bad about them. Stylistically they were far from reaching the level of the Smart Car. The representative did not make any offer to show us what, if anything, lay beneath the bonnets.

"OK, I would have asked if they were air powered ..."

The guy said the "engine" on display with the transmission is what powers one of the cars on display. Considering the cars were in the showroom of an air car factory, one might reasonably assume they were all supposed to be air powered.

Of course, 50 percent of the engines on display were spark ignition relics and of the other 2, only one showed indications of ever having been connected to an air source.

I strongly recommend anyone in the vicinity to visit the place and see for themselves. Just don't go in the morning.

In my less than humble opinion, it was not a pretty sight. Nothing they displayed or were willing to discuss indicated they had or would ever have anything that would tempt me to pull out a checkbook.

"I think the true answer will come from Tata,..."

I am looking forward to that day.

"Were you able to spy anything else ...?"

Glad you asked. No.

There was no indication of any shipping or receiving or materials handling going on. There were no dumpsters or anything that showed the back of the place was in use for anything.

As we left there were 5 or 6 of people gathering in the side lot to watch a funny looking "mini-moke" type of vehicle getting ready to show its stuff but since we didn't invest we weren't invited to watch and quite frankly, there is not much to be learned by watching a vehicle drive around in small circles in a parking lot - the 4 wheeled vehicle has already been proven to roll and can be steered by a human - plus we already saw the movie.

"Nice idea but the numbers just don't add up."

They do "add up" they just aren't equal. The power recovered through regenerative braking is still power returned to the system and is available for future use if stored. The only time this doesn't "add up" is when a salesman or con artist convinces the gullible that there are no losses and the energy recovered is equal to or greater than the energy expended.

Around 1908 a company built an electric railway across the mountains between northern Idaho and Montana that was powered by hydroelectric generators along the river beside the tracks. The downhill train returned enough energy to the supply through regenerative braking to provide a large portion of the power used by an uphill moving train and reduced the load on the hydro plants to a very low level. It takes a lot of energy to get a train up a mountain and almost as much to slow it down on the other side. Better to turn that energy into electricity or store it as compressed air than to waste it as heat into the atmosphere.

That air bike would have recovered part of the energy that got it to the top of the hill and returned it for use when you needed it later. That energy is real. The only question here is if that energy is worth the complexity and cost.