Jan 13 2009
America’s Car of the Future?
Wohoo! I really hope it comes true! I stumbled across an article today about the possibility of an air car that is very affordable. “An air car?!” you say? That was what I thought, too. How is that possible?!
Zero Pollution Motors based in New York is very proud of them. They touted it as the “world’s cleanest car”. No kidding. If all it runs on is air, we don’t need another smog check ever again!
Actually, it doesn’t run entirely on air, but it’s still a lot better than oil. Listen to this, you won’t believe it. The air car of the future runs on, and I’m going to quote Jim Ostroff, “a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.” I vote for the alcohol. Down with oil. Oil is bad for the environment.
I know the next question is on everyone’s mind: How much is it? Hold your breath. It’s around $20,000. Not bad for a car whose fastest speed on a tank of compressed air is 35mph for 60 miles. Wait. 35mph? Even a speedster like me who zoomed down the freeway at 2AM in the morning at 75mph won’t find that appealing. I’ll never make it home at that pace! In fact, I may not even make it home on a single tank! Perhaps Zero Pollution Motors can fiddle with it a little more and bring up the speed to, say 80mph at the very minimum? Hopefully a tank of compressed can last more than 60 miles, like 100 miles. That would be great.
On the other hand, it’s good to putter around town on such an awesome concept car. Well, for that kinda price to just putter around town, maybe it’s better for me to get a high speed bicycle.
But it’s a good start. An air car. Imagine that. A really good start to think about going cold turkey on oil to help protect the world we live in. Then again, according the FAO’s report on “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the CO2 emissions from all the cars, planes - any kinds of vehicles, you name it - is still not as much as the amount released from the raising of livestock. The burps and the flatulence from the millions and maybe billions of cows and other farm animals every day sure is something to pinch your nose on. Something to think about.
Neat, I’ve never heard of those before. By the way I am viewing your blog with IE right now, and you have some garbage code at the top of your post. Go to IE and edit or they will put it as a problem post!
Hi Brad, thanks for reading and thank you for pointing out the garbage code.
I watched a video about an air vehicle on YouTube a while ago - it was a documentary done by the BBC, and was very in-depth about what was being done. The prototypes didn’t look anything like the car in that article, so I’m thinking they must be two different vehicles. This company also had a different timeline - they were supposed to get the vehicles out on the road sometime this year, and were only supposed to cost $12,000. They had a much larger range and could go faster too.
It’s been a while since I watched the video, but I’ve been intrigued by the idea ever since, and told my husband that our next vehicle would be an air powered one.
We shall see…
Hava
http://nonfictionlover.today.com