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Tata Air Powered Car
The Air powered Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.
Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air powered Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.
And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater. One CAT economy model (the one headed for India) and the three-seat Mini CAT (like a Smart For Two without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., the startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads will be a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, a six-seat modified version of MDI’s City CAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.
Compressed Air Powered Car
We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air powered Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in the north of 35 mph, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process official refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.
“I want to stress that these are estimates and that we’ll know soon more precisely from our engineers,” ZPM spokesman Kevin Haydon told PM, “but a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gal. of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles.”
Those figures would make the Air Car, along with Aptera’s Typ-1 and Tesla’s Roadster, a favorite among early entrants for the Automotive X Prize, for which MDI and ZPM have already signed up. But with the family-size, four-door City CAT undergoing standard safety tests in Europe, and then side-impact tests once it arrives in the States, could it be the first 100-mpg, non-electric car you can actually buy?
Apparently this is vaporware. Internet searches cannot find anything on these cars in the Northeast. The ZPM website has fallen and not been renewed.
It’s a great thought – but apparently never was allowed to happen.
Why TATA Motors want to delay the launch of air car, when it could purchase the technology long back.Are they trying to cover all their expenses invested on their previous petrol and diesel version.
If Ratan tata got any responsibility to save this environment he should immediately launch the air cars in to Indian markets.
If not its shame on Tata motors and Ratan tata.