Posted on 01/23/2013 2:21:05 AM PST by rawhide
•Peugeot Citroen invents technology for air car ready for the market by 2016 •'Hybrid Air' engine system runs on petrol and air, instead of electricity •Company predicts 'Hybrid Air' to achieve 117 miles per gallon by 2020 French car giant PSA Peugeot Citroen believes it can put an air- powered vehicle on the road by 2016.
Its scientists say it will knock 45 per cent off fuel bills for an average motorist. And when driving in towns and cities costs could be slashed by as much as 80 per cent because the car will be running on air for four-fifths of the time.
The system works by using a normal internal combustion engine, special hydraulics and an adapted gearbox along with compressed air cylinders that store and release energy. This enables it to run on petrol or air, or a combination of the two.
Air power would be used solely for city use, automatically activated below 43mph and available for ‘60 to 80 per cent of the time in city driving’. By 2020, the cars could be achieving an average of 117 miles a gallon, the company predicts.
The air compression system can re-use all the energy normally lost when slowing down and braking. The motor and a pump are in the engine bay, fed by a compressed air tank underneath the car, running parallel to the exhaust.
The revolutionary new ‘Hybrid Air’ engine system – the first to combine petrol with compressed air – is a breakthrough for hybrid cars because expensive batteries will no longer be needed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Didn’t Lt. Columbo drive one those? There are “only three like it in the States”.
Didn’t Lt. Columbo drive one those? There are “only three like it in the States”.
Dear American recipient of hundreds of millions of taxpayer subsidies, your car is on fire and you’ve just gotten your ass kicked by the French.
U.S. Car Companies and Your Friendly Government have done a fine job keeping small, efficient diesels out of the US - and keeping Americans from knowing what they’re missing - but it’ll require some sneaky K-Street shenanigans to keep this one away.
Nevertheless, they will succeed. Don’t get your hopes up: If they can keep you from getting a Hilux or a Peugeot diesel, they’ll keep you from this one.
Wouldn’t it just be eaiser to put Al Gore in the trunk facing backwards?
Compressed air boost fed via regenerative braking is not new, it’s existed in commercial trucks for a while. Ford was doing some R&D on it a few years back in pickup trucks as I recall.
But, actually applying such a system to a passenger car and making it available to the public now is a major breakthrough, so congratulations are in order to Citroen. I’ve always admired Citroen, very innovative. They march to the beat of a different drummer. Their vision of “car” often isn’t at all like the American concept of a car, but when it works it’s something else.
Too bad they’re just a little too offbeat for the domestic market. I’d like to see them return.
Where’s the dryer?
There does seem to be a regulatory bias against small diesel trucks and vans. Very few have ever been available in the United States. What few there have been, have almost all been manufactured by Isuzu.
Those are tinker toys, not cars!!
I am constantly pulling objects like that out from between my big rigs duals. Throws the tire balance out of whack, thanfully the screams are very short lived as well.
Needs foot pedals as well.
I bet the metrosexuals will get all horny seeing these.
“Looks like something that escaped from the roach motel.”
I can see the resemblance to the Citroen 2CV.
Unfortunately...
Color me skeptical, at least as the car is described in this poorly-written article.
There is no way a gas/air hybrid can run on air 80% of the time in city driving with air compressed by slowing down and braking. By definition, the energy produced this way must be less than 50% of the total used by the car during its trip, and when you figure in the losses in the various stages of the process a great deal less. I’d be very surprised if it’s as much as 25% of the time.
To get to the 80% number even for short trips you’d have to charge the air tanks initially, similar to recharging batteries in the garage overnight. Doing so, of course, uses electricity which must be generated using coal, gas or some other method.
Also, compressing air and then using it to drive motors, while highly convenient, is wildly inefficient.
The process for an IC car is: fuel burns, drives wheels, car moves.
For an air car it’s something like: fuel burns, drives turbine which turns generator to produce electricity, juice transmitted (with losses) to garage, electricity runs motor to run air pump, which compresses air with BIG energy losses, air is stored till released to run a not particularly efficient air motor which turns wheels, car moves.
Two stage process versus minimum five-stage process. By definition energy is lost at each stage, some more than others.
Ridiculous...
How do they make the process adiabatic?
Okay. Looked it up and I’m not entirely right.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/4/044011/fulltext/#erl323265s6.2
It is apparently possible to run such a hybrid with the fuel engine always operating at peak efficiency to either drive the vehicle or compress the air, then have it shut off when tanks are fully pressurized. A fuel engine operating always in its peak efficiency range is going to be much more efficient overall, so you are capturing energy efficiencies other than those associated with braking and slowing down.
I still suspect that by the time you run a complete analysis of energy used to travel 1000 miles it’s going to be tough to beat an efficient IC car by much, particularly the highly efficient diesels common in Europe but for unknown reasons not imported to here.
As anybody who has ever worked with compressed air knows, this process creates a LOT of waste heat. If they have found a way to use some of this heat it will help efficiencies considerably. The process also condenses a LOT of water out of the compressed air, which especially in humid climates will create some interesting challenges for the engineers.
That is an interesting study at the link you posted!
Clown car alert.
A little more here:
“No Hilux for me, thanks. I appreciate having the choice, but I’ll stick with my F150.”
Said nobody ever.
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