MiniCat - air powered car
by TreeHugger on 01.21.05
Can you hear the café chatter? “Your fuel cell car runs on hydrogen and emits only water? Oh, Darling, that's so 2004! See my MiniCat over the road there? Air, sweetie. Thats all it needs. And all it emits.” What she probably wouldn’t tell her fellow latté sipper is that it costs a paltry 0.75 € per 100km (or $1 USD per 62 miles) to run. Due out this year, the Minicat is powered by a revoluntary compressed air technology (CAT) engine. How it works is largely a well kept secret. But the results are a vehicle with a range of about 300km or 10 hours driving. At a purpose built air-refill station it takes 3 minutes to fill the 91 litre tank. Home filling would require ...
... around 3 hours. And the only emissions are a little cool air, which they are thinking of harnessing to run a form of air conditioning. And if the engine is not funky enough for you, what about the car itself?
Guy Negre, the engine's French designer, is figuring on the cars’s shell being composed of fibreglass or hemp fibre, over a tubular chassis fixed with aerospace adhesives. Three seats across the front! The dashboard is really an on-board computer with abilities like a phone, GPS and traffic information, etc. Electrical wiring has been reduced by 20 kg (44 lb) and the key is a card that works by proximity - walking up to the car with the card in your pocket will automatically open the lock. And the weirdest thing is that the suggested price for such a wonder is only $10,000 USD. This is partly due to the fact they have designed their own mini factories to produce the MiniCat, with 23 countries already wanting a piece of the action. Hope they can pull it all off. Might ramp up the speed of development elsewhere in the auto industry. ::MDI Air Car [by WM]
Or for our Spanish/Español readers.
NB: We originally mentioned this car in early Oct 04 but with nearly 700 entries since, you may have missed it so we've dusted it off and refreshed it for your enjoyment once more.
We need to be careful (as green-oriented folk) to distinguish between products that reduce emissions vs products that simply transfer emissions somewhere else. It is not true that a vehicle like this has no emissions. The emissions have occurred in the power plant that generated the electricity for the compressor.
If the power plant is fossil-fuel based then it only reduces emissions if the overall energy per mile is lowered. Unfortunately I suspect that the fact that the tax system skews petrol prices upwards vs centrally generated electricity will make the low running costs of this be assumed to translate to low emissions.
What is true is that if this technology is twinned with renewable (eg wind/solar) then it does have great potential. Again unfortunately there is the potential for nuclear proponents to suggest that this is a good way forward, based on it being away to convert nuclear energy into vehicle motion with no emissions. But how green do we view nuclear energy?
I notice their website hasn't been updated in a while. Search on google found an article that says that they are have challenges making it work.
"The only problem is, it won't work in real life.
"The clean engine is insufficient to be sold," he says, after seven years of development. The air-powered car has too little power and too little range. Negre's son Cyril, an engineer at MDI, said that the CityCAT prototype goes about 37 miles on the test track before it runs out of air."
http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/aircar18_20040318.htm
Agree with the two 2's above, that all 'green' transport may not be perfect 'fresh out of the box'. But least the intention is there. Someone wanted to make the world a better place. And importantly they acted on that impulse. Like others before them, their success, or otherwise, has laid the foundation of future work. The first watercraft purpose built by man did not circumnavigate the globe. It probably didn't even float! Solutions only arrive after we realise the problem. The two must travel together. At TreeHugger we are not saying such products or services are the destination, rather they are signposts to a brighter future.
TELL ME HOW IT WORKS!!!!!!
I have wanted a Mini cat ever since I saw one. But I want to own a Pink one. Is that possible and if you have one in stock please send me pictures. I believe that the Minicat is the new and improved car. It looks cool and saves the earth. But it dosent have a back seat. just kidding if you kno what I mean. Thanks!
Katie
hello i am netta and i relly think its a great idea! i love it and i think you should put it out in the market
You hippies won't be happy until we all live in grass huts and ride bikes everywhere. Someone comes out with a new product that is revolutionary to say the least and you tear it down and discredit it as if it was a fraud. Whats really funny is, I don't know a single SierraClub member or "Environ-mentalist" who actually goes out and works in the forests or high country. They very people you bash (4x4 drives, dirtbike riders, etc) are the ones who fight to keep trails open and work hand in hand with BLM and the Forestry Department. If you ask me, the hippies are the real fraud.
Isothermal compression/expansion changes availability,
thus acting as storage with a tank. The air car uses near
isothermal. Like an electric car except less expensive, and
no need for new batteries. Hope they get it out!!
BTW, look at www.annualizedgeosolar.com. Their technology for
a self-heating/cooling house could be added to an existing house
if someone was willing to do the work needed. I'm modifying my
own - starting in May, 2005.
--
Douglas Hvistendahl
Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever,
unless you test your assumptions
I have been watching the progress, or lack of it,
on the air powered car for some time, but when
will it be available? As for the arguement that
emmissions are just transferred to the power
station, that is stupid, at least at the power
station there is the possibility of controlling
emmission, this is not so with individual fossil
burning cars.