Wooow that dude rocked! Anyhow here's my addition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car
This is an article about a compressed air car, which operates via using compressed air in a similair manner benzine is used in a car. They simply use the expansion of the air to let the car drive.
Advantages
The principle advantages for an air powered vehicle are:
* CAT redureces the cost of vehicle production by about 20%, because there is no need to build a cooling system, fuel tank, spark plugs or silencers.
* Most compressed air engines do not need a transmision, just a flow control.
* Very low self-discharge rate (most batteries will deplete their charge without external load at a rate determined by the chemistry, design, and size, while compressed gas storage will have an extremely low leakage rate)
* Long storage lifetime device (electric vehicle batteries have a limited useful number of cycles, and sometimes a limited calendar lifetime, irrespective of use). This means that batteries in operation are much more expensive than compressed air storage, and are more pollutant because a lot more pollutant material needs to be used (typical car batteries are made from sulphuric acids and lead).
* Lower initial cost than battery electric vehicles when mass produced (€3,000).
* Expansion of the compressed air reduces its temperature and heat from the passenger compartment may be cooled using a heat exchanger, providing both relief from hot weather air conditioning and increased efficiency.
* Zero pollutant emissions from the vehicle itself.
* There is already infrastructure in place for creating massive amounts of compressed air (i.e. local home center for air compressors)
* Compressed air is not a fire hazard, only a rapid depressurization hazard (this can be mitigated by using carbon fiber tanks like firemen do).
* Air turbine technology, closely related to steam turbine technology, is a practice over 50 years old. It is simple to achieve with low tech materials. This would mean that developing countries, and rapidly growing countries like China and India, could easily implement a less polluting means of personal transportation than an internal combustion engine automobile.
Disadvantages
Having solved most of the high pressure storage and handling problems, the main remaining disadvantages are related to the thermodynamics.
* At the supply station, compressing the air heats it, and if then directly transferred in a heated state to the vehicle storage tanks will then cool and reduce the pressure. If cooled before transfer, the energy in this heat will be lost unless sophisticated low grade heat utilization is employed (see cogeneration).
* Within the vehicle, expansion and consequent pressure reduction in the throttle or engine chills the air, reducing its effective pressure. Addition of ambient heat will increase this pressure and this addition leads to a more complex propulsion system. While an attempt was made in the Nègre system to warm the air in a long portion of the stroke at top dead center, it appears that this scheme has been abandoned due to inherent imbalances causing unacceptable levels of vibration.
* Passenger compartment heating is more difficult since the propulsion system does not provide a source of waste heat. Some form of heat pump, or more likely, an electric heater would be required.
* Limited range due to available tank technology. The air engine suffers from similar problems to hydrogen vehicles in this regard.
* Using energy to compress air is less efficient than charging a battery with that same energy.
* Less efficient than electric motors.
* While the air engine reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the vehicle, the energy used to compress the air may not come from clean sources.
* Long refill times when compared to conventional automobiles, circa 4 Hours using a home or low-end system; a few minutes at a larger, commercial refilling station.[3]
The primairy disadvantage is the lacking tank technology, which basicly means you can only drive a limited distance before having to tank. This can be solved, in theory, by collecting air whilst driving. All current engines use air collected while driving to cool the engine. What could be done is collecting the air whilst driving, use the energy generated from the driving (which is collected by dynamo's to the wheels). This energy could be used to charge a thermal compressor to compress air and thus create fuel while driving. This could reduce the amount of fuel needed to very little or even nothing. Ofcourse, I'm not a specialist and I cant do the math needed for this. So I'm not sure whether that would work but it could help right? If worried about the regular we can turn to another fact; it would take only 3 bucks to fully refuel a tank. Another idea is to pump yourself buuut that might take a while. Anyhow that's what I've got.
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. But we must care more than now this argument.