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From the Site:

A new car maker has a plan for cheap, environmentally friendly cars to be built all over the country

An air-powered car? It may be available sooner than you think at a price tag that will hardly be a budget buster. The vehicle may not run like a speed racer on back road highways, but developer Zero Pollution Motors is betting consumers will be willing to fork over $20,000 for a vehicle that can motor around all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.

The expertise needed to build a compressed air car, or CAV, is not rocket science, either. Years-old, off-the-shelf technology uses compressed air to drive old-fashioned car engine pistons instead of combusting gas or diesel fuel to create a burst of air to do the same thing. Indian carmaker Tata has no qualms about the technology. It has already bought the rights to make the car for the huge Indian market.

The air car can tool along at a top speed of 35 mph for some 60 miles or so on a tank of compressed air, a sufficient distance for 80% of consumers to commute to work and back and complete daily chores.

On highways, the CAV can cruise at interstate speeds for nearly 800 miles with a small motor that compresses outside air to keep the tank filled. The motor isn’t finicky about fuel. It will burn gasoline or diesel as well as biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil.

This car leaves the highest-mpg vehicles you can buy right now in the dust. Even if it used only regular gasoline, the air car would average 106 mpg, more than double today’s fuel sipping champ, the Toyota Prius. The air tank also can be refilled when it’s not in use by being plugged into a wall socket and recharged with electricity as the motor compresses air.

Automakers aren’t quite ready yet to gear up huge assembly line operations churning out air cars or set up glitzy dealer showrooms where you can ooh and aah over the color or style. But the vehicles will be built in factories that will make up to 8,000 vehicles a year, likely starting in 2011, and be sold directly to consumers.

There will be plants in nearly every state, based on the number of drivers in the state. California will have as many as 17 air car manufacturing plants, and there’ll be around 12 in Florida, eight in New York, four in Georgia, while two in Connecticut will serve that state and Rhode Island.

The technology goes back decades, but is coming together courtesy of two converging forces. First, new laws are likely to be enacted in a few years that will limit carbon dioxide emissions and force automakers to develop ultra-high mileage cars and those that emit minuscule amounts of or no gases linked with global warming. Plug-in electric hybrids will slash these emissions, but they’ll be pricey at around $40,000 each and require some changes in infrastructure — such as widespread recharge stations — to be practical. Fuel cells that burn hydrogen to produce only water vapor still face daunting technical challenges.

Second, the relatively high cost of gas has expedited the air car’s development. Yes, pump prices have plunged since July from record levels, but remain way higher than just a few years ago and continue to take a bite out of disposable income. Refiners will face carbon emission restraints, too, and steeply higher costs will be passed along at the pump.

Tata doesn’t plan to produce the cars in the U.S. Instead, it plans to charge $15 million for the rights to the technology, a fully built turnkey auto assembly plant, tools, machinery, training and rights to use trademarks.

The CAV has a big hurdle: proving it can pass federal crash tests. Shiva Vencat, president and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, says he’s not worried. “The requirements can be modeled [on a computer] before anything is built and adjusted to ensure that the cars will pass” the crash tests. Vencat also is a vice president of MDI Inc., a French company that developed the air car.

The inventor of this technology is Mr. Guy Negre, who is the founder and CEO of MDI SA, a company headquartered in Luxembourg with its R and D in Nice, France.

Source: Yahoo.com

November 3, 2008 11:53 a.m. EST

AHN Staff

Providence, RI (AHN) - Despite oil prices going down, the $150 a barrel record price in July had many motorists think twice on the cost of fuel they are placing inside their vehicle’s tanks. It has also spurred inventors to come up with vehicles that run on alternative fuels.

Two such vehicles are making inroads in various global cities today. One is the electric bike, which is silent compared to motorcycles that run on fossil fuel. The other is a car that will run on air and a little fluid.

Various global capitals are now testing grounds for the popularity and durability of electric bikes. In the U.S. the top manufacturer is Vectrix Corporation, which in September reported a 738 percent increase in revenues compared to the same period last year. Vectrix sold 1,184 electric bikes to dealers in September, which is a 156 percent rise.

Its Electric Vx1 and Vx1e models were assembled in Poland, but Vectrix recently signed a contract with China to have a facility in Asia. Outside the U.S., Taiwan’s SYM Corporation plans to also outsource the manufacturing of its electric bikes in China.

Vectrix bikes have been spotted in the Netherlands and Scotland. The electric bikes, though, are still pricey at $11,000 in the U.S.

Meanwhile, another U.S. firm, Zero Pollution Motors, is planning to come out with a $20,000 vehicle that runs on air and a bit of salad oil, alcohol or gasoline. It will use compressed air to drive car engine pistons instead of gas or diesel similar to what Indian car manufacturer Tata has used.

A tank of compressed air will travel for about 60 miles at 35 mph. Refill for the air tank will be by plugging it into a wall socket or recharging with electricity since the motor compresses air. The air vehicles will likely roll out of U.S. factories by 2011 with planned manufacturing plants in almost all the states.

Silent Electric Scooter Making Inroads In Many Capital Cities Around The World | AHN | November 3, 2008

Zero Pollution Motors: A Car That Can Run on Compressed Air

From the site:

Montreal should consider replacing the F1 with a quieter, greener type of race

HENRY AUBIN, The Gazette

Published: Saturday, November 01

It’s been over a week since Mayor Gérald Tremblay flew to London to try to save Montreal’s Grand Prix, yet the fate of the race is still up in the air. Even if Montreal were to retain the event, it might be for only a few years. It’s not too early to start thinking of a Plan B - some sort of event that might take the place of the Formula One race.

Are there any ideas out there for an event that might bring in tourists (although not as many as the Grand Prix, No. 1 tourist-attracting event in Canada) and that might also raise the city’s profile internationally?

The most thought-provoking idea I’ve heard so far comes from freelance journalist Jacques Duval. In a brief commentary that appeared in La Presse, he proposed that Montreal start a Grand Prix for “ecological” cars - specifically electric cars.

“Huh?” you’re saying. “What kind of crunchy-granola idea is this?”

Well, for starters, the idea’s initiator is no wing-ding. Duval is a former racing driver - he’s competed in the Daytona 500 - and as a journalist he specializes in cars, writing an annual guide to the new models.

He tosses out the idea of a six-hour endurance race in which the vehicles might include a Tesla (an electric car being made in California) and a Volt (a model that GM hopes will hit the market in 2010 - if the company doesn’t hit the skids first).

Here are four reasons Duval is on the right track.

First, ecological cars represent the future. They are everything that F1 cars are not.

Montreal’s Grand Prix week is a greenhouse-gas fiesta, a celebration of environmental indifference. True, F1 racing is trying to adapt to the times: It will soon require all cars to carry a gizmo called KERS, or kinetic energy recovery system, to cut fuel consumption. But any cut will be modest. The F1 going green is like a dinosaur getting trendy tattoos. It’s still a dinosaur. Duval’s idea, by contrast, would be motor-racing with a conscience.

The second reason the idea is attractive is that it would be cheap. Montreal already has the infrastructure - the track on Île Notre Dame.

Third, the race would further Montreal’s image as a savvy, forward-looking place. Indeed, the cars would underscore Quebec’s stature as a rich source of hydroelectricity.

Finally, the contest would popularize so-called ecological cars and spur investment in a new generation of car technology here and around the world. Note that already Quebec already has one such company: The Zenn Motor Co., based in Toronto, manufactures its electric cars in St. Jérôme.

In short, the race would be good for the planet.

But would a race between electric cars be the best kind of car contest for the planet? Maybe not.

Some environmentalists have almost canonized the electric car since it runs on a battery and does not spew greenhouse gases. But is it really so ecological? In Quebec and some other parts of the continent, yes: The battery’s power can come from hydro dams. But in most of the continent, the source is either coal or oil, major climate-change culprits. As an alternate source, nuclear energy would pose separate environmental problems.

So the electric car in its current form would not be the last word in any auto race that claims to be green. But other innovative technologies exist.

BMW, for example is working on a car running on hydrogen that can go 200 kilometres per hour. Trouble is, fossil fuel now generates the hydrogen.

Solar-powered cars might hold the most promise. Since 1990, they’ve competed in something called the North American Solar Challenge in which university students enter their inventions in a race from Dallas to Calgary. Because they go on public roads, they limit their speed to 105 kilometres per hour.

Then again, with more research, electric-car batteries might use renewable energy. Britain, for example, is looking at wind and wave generation. Hydrogen cars might also rely on a more virtuous fuel.

The point is that just as F1 now encourages ever more sophisticated gasoline-powered motors, so a new well-marketed race could give a push to R & D of new technologies. Vroom-vroom races will some day seem as passé as soapbox derbies today.

The whole world will soon be veering away from the internal-combustion engine. Here’s a way for Montreal to brand itself as out in front.

Forget the F1, let’s go electric