The fuel crisis and the surge in oil price is a global issue. Another serious concern is the phenomenal carbon dioxide emission: approximately there is about 27.245 billion metric tonnes emission of CO2 in the world (2004). The recent updates show that America is the leading emitter of CO2 after China at top, whereas Pakistan and India rank 33 and 4 respectively.
The grave situation relating to oil crisis and pollution forced scientists to look for alternative energy resources and one of the achievements in this regard, with a decade of efforts, brings the Compressesd Air Technology (CAT) Car under a green technology concept. The highly innovative, zero-emissions Air Car has been developed by French ex-Formula One engineer Guy Negre, who belongs to the small town of Carros in France. Negre’s company, Moteur Developpment International (MDI), has been working on the project since early 1990s and they have finally succeeded in designing an economically-efficent car engine.
The car has been produced in prototypes called the Minicat for in-town driving, Multicat for urban transport and the Citycat with a longer driving range. It uses an electric motor paired with compressed air. An important feature is that the outside temperature does not modify significantly the autonomy and the performances of the car. The pressurised air makes the car’s pistons move ó and the pistons compress the air into a reservoir that lets it keep working.
The car can travel up to 120 miles (200 kilometres) on one tank of compressed air and reach speed of up to 65 mph (110 kph). Refuelling is simple and will only take a few minutes.
The fuel air can be compressed at home or refilled easily from service stations or other outlets with air compressors.
The cost of a fill up is approximately $2.00. If a driver doesn’t have access to a compressor station, they will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tank in about 3-4 hours.
There are several advantages of the CAT car: it is cost-effective as compared with the cost involved in a normal combustion engine. As air is abundant, economical, transportable and, most importantly, nonpolluting, the technology involved with compressed air reduces the production costs of vehicles by about 20 per cent because it is not necessary to assemble a refrigeration tank,†a fuel tank, spark plugs or silencer. There is a simple and robust mechanical design of the CAT car with less manufacturing and maintenance cost.
The world’s first commercial compressed air-powered vehicle is rolling towards the production line. The company approached a new production concept as compared with the classical approach of production and distribution from a single location, based on local production and distribution. The reason behind this is based on a number of advantages which include reduction in the cost of transportation of raw materials to the manufacturing plant, reduction in cost of distribution of finished goods to distributors in other regions; and the reduction of emission of CO2 by not using the transportation means such as Airplane, Big Fleets, etc.
MDI has licensed manufacturers in various parts of the world including India and Australia. The Air Car enters European and Australian markets in 2008. A production licence for MDI’s compressed-air vehicles has recently been signed in Nice, for markets in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Panama. There are now 50 fabrication and distribution licences signed in the world, from a total of 400 available. Some of the countries that have also signed agreements with MDI include France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, New Zealand, Israel, South Africa, etc.
Tata Motors, which is the leading automotive R&D company in India, famous for its commercial and passenger vehicles, signed an agreement of support and cooperation with MDI for the development and refinement of the technology in India. Tata group has invested nearly $30 million in the project and reportedly will start pre-production of the CAT car this year. It is expected that approximately 6,000 Air Cars will be cruising the streets of India by 2008. The basic CAT car is expected to be priced closer to $6,000.
Some critics have pointed out that the car’s performance may be exaggerated, but even if the car can only achieve half of what the makers claim, it could turn out to be the answer both to the energy crisis and to the problem of pollution.
Not only is the car itself remarkably cheap, but its running cost is about 80 per cent less than petrol or diesel powered vehicles. The use of compressed air for storing energy is a method that is not only efficient and clean, but also economical. Indeed, this is a breakthrough technology that could change the road transport paradigm completely eliminating (or radically reducing) carbon emissions from transport and greatly reducing oil imports.
This will also bring the concept of free urban transport in the developing countries.
The questions arising here are a) will this technology bring an economic revival and b) what will be the impact on the economies of the developed and highly rich oil countries?
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