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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:23 pm
by Nigel P.A. Smith
Hi guys,
Sorry you are right about these, but they were a bit misleading on the first few video's I saw, when they say it just runs on air, they didn't mention petrol, then they said 4,500 Km's on a tank of gas I thought that was a lot more than 106 MPG, I didn't read the small print.

And PHEV sounds like your friend got scammed 19,000 dollars is a lot more than £2600 and won't be available till at least next year so couldn't
be second hand either. sorry. :oops:

Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:04 pm
by qdos
The MDI machine is actually French not American

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 10:56 am
by PHEV
That was new price I am told, though I have been unable to verify that! I will post back if it ever arrives..

The car is being produced by the indian firm TATA...that already sells some of the worlds cheapest cars. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7243247.stm)

Also, the spec of this model does NOT include an ICE engine, there is a mains powered compressor in the back, and the car can be filled by any compressor. (allegedly)

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:46 pm
by EVguru
PHEV wrote:the spec of this model does NOT include an ICE engine, there is a mains powered compressor in the back, and the car can be filled by any compressor. (allegedly)

So it has a different power unit to the one described on the website?

The prototype model on the site looks exactly like the MDI car. They've been making claims to be able to go further and faster than ANY EV has gone for years, but even if their maximum range was acheiviable at their maximum speed, it wouldn't be true these days.

Compressed air has a poor energy density and usually a very poor energy efficiency. You need a very light tank to get anything like a reasonable energy density, but the composite tanks can't take much heat. Air of course gets hot when you compress it, so to protect the tank you have to cool the air and throw away a lot of the energy. The air expands in the engine doing work, getting cold in the process. Anyone who's used conventional airtools knows just how uncomfortably cold they can get. You could use ambient air to get some of the temperature and energy back, but you need to watch out for icing up.