THE CAR THAT RUNS ON

AIR
BRINGING NEW MEANING TO RUNNING ON FUMES
By Matthew Jancer February 25, 2014
For more than a century, air cars have remained a quixotic quest of engineersan idealistic
exercise with little long-term likelihood of entering mass production. As fuels go, air has obvious
upsides: Its ubiquitous, clean, and, best of all, free. But air requires energy to store energy
because it must be compressed, limiting the utility of an all-air car. Two engineers from French
automaker PSA Peugeot Citron thought they could overcome that problem by pairing two triedand-true technologies: a gasoline engine and hydraulics. To test the concept, they formed the
Hybrid Air Program in 2010 and connected the engine of a subcompact car to a commercial
airplanes hydraulic system. We were trying to push the project against a lot of people who
didnt trust the fact that we would succeed, says engineer Karim Mokaddem.
The Hybrid Air powertrain, which Mokaddem designed with Andrs Yarce, uses a hydraulic
pump and a piston to compress the nitrogen gas in a tank called the high-pressure accumulator.
Hitting the accelerator releases the pressurized gas, which then moves hydraulic fluid through the
same pump in reverse. The pump acts as a motor to power the wheels and the hydraulic fluid
ends up in a second tank.
During normal driving, the system will switch between gas and air power, says Yarce. Much like
with hybrid-electric vehicles, the gasoline engine provides a boost up steep hills and on the
highway, and it repressurizes the nitrogen tank if the regenerative-braking system hasnt done so.
Yarce and Mokaddem predict that, for urban driving less than 43 miles per hour, between 60 and
80 percent of drive time will be under air power alone. Compared with gasoline-electrics, the
Hybrid Air powertrain is lighter and cheaper, and there are no bulky batteries that wear out or
intrude on passenger and trunk space. The system is designed to live for the life of the vehicle,
says Yarce. The only possible [maintenance] will be an air recharge.
Yarce and Mokaddems prototype was so successful that PSA Peugeot Citron has decided to
manufacture production vehicles. The Hybrid Air powertrain will appear in all Citron and
Peugeot subcompacts as an option in Europe and possibly other international markets in 2016.
The company hasnt yet released a price, but it says that its air cars will cost around the same
amount as other gasoline hybrids.

The Air Car

1.

The Hybrid Air Car uses compressed nitrogen, which is held in a tank called the highpressure accumulator.
2.
A hydraulic pump and piston compress nitrogen in the accumulator. When the nitrogen
is released (by pressing the accelerator), the pump runs in reverse. Acting now as a motor, it
harnesses the energy of the moving hydraulic fluid to send power to the wheels.
3.
After the hydraulic fluid passes through the motor, it flows to the low-pressure
accumulator, where it is stored for later use.
4.
A gasoline engine supplements the air power when accelerating or going up hills. This
could be an 82-hp 1.2 L I3 for subcompacts and a 110-hp 1.6 L I4 for compacts.
This article originally appeared in the March 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Jancer, M. (2014, February 25). THE CAR THAT RUNS ON AIR. Retrieved January 21,
2017, from http://www.popsci.com/article/cars/car-runs-air

The car that runs on FRESH AIR: It hits 111mph and only
water comes out the exhaust... no it's not science fiction and
you can buy it here soon
Just imagine that instead of spewing out a noxious mixture of carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, benzene and particulates, your cars exhaust
emitted only water. Yes, thats right, just good old H2O, in a form so pure you
could drink it.
It might sound like science fiction, but it is in fact reality, in the form of a new car
that will appear on our streets later this year called the Toyota Mirai.
Instead of being filled up with petrol or diesel, the Mirai (the word is Japanese for
future) is powered by the most common element in the universe hydrogen.
The gas is inserted into the cars tank just as you might use a petrol pump, and
then, through the wonders of a fuel cell which produces a chemical reaction
between the hydrogen and oxygen in the air it is converted into electricity,
which in turn powers the car.
Incredibly, the only by-product of this process is water.
Scroll down for video

Gas is inserted into the cars tank just as you might use a petrol pump, and then,
through the wonders of a fuel cell which produces a chemical reaction between
the hydrogen and oxygen in the air it is converted into electricity, which in turn
powers the car
Cynical petrolheads will doubtless dismiss the Mirai as a gimmick, which, like so
many electric cars, probably only has a range of a few miles, and goes no faster
than 40 mph. But theyd be wrong, as the Mirai is actually a proper car.

It can hit 111 mph, go from 0-62 mph in 9.6 seconds, and, most importantly of all,
has a range of around 300 miles enough to get you from Watford to Carlisle on
a single tank. The ultra-strong carbon-fibre tanks can be filled in around ten
minutes.
Of course, if you mention hydrogen as a means to power transportation, many
people will think of the Hindenburg, the airship which exploded in a vast ball of
flames over New Jersey in 1937.
But there is an extremely low danger of that happening with a hydrogen car, since
the fuel cells are encased in tanks that are bulletproof. In fact, you have much more
chance of being blown up by a traditional petrol tank in a crash.
So on the surface, it looks like cars such as the Mirai do have the potential to
change the world. Next year, Honda will enter the market, and Ford and Nissan are
also exploring the technology.
If all motor vehicles ran on hydrogen, then we would remove all the traffic
pollution from our cities and streets. And with almost no demand for petrol and
diesel, we would no longer be so reliant on oil-producing states in the Middle East.
At a stroke, the whole environment and economy of the planet would be
transformed.
Perhaps inevitably, there are snags, as there usually are with rosy visions of the
future. The first problem is cost. At the moment, hydrogen cars are seriously
expensive. The Mirai, a four-door saloon, is due to go on sale for a whopping
63,104.
The next problem is where you are going to fill it up. You will need to find your
nearest hydrogen filling station, and at the moment there are only 12 in the UK,
with none further north than Sheffield. Some predict that there will be 65 of these
stations by 2020, and it will cost around 65 to fill up.
Of course, questions of cost and infrastructure can always be solved by
governments creating incentives offering buyers grants, and even providing the
hydrogen free.

This is already happening in Japan a country increasingly concerned about its

energy policy in the wake of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
Its government is heavily subsidising the purchase of hydrogen cars to the tune of
17,000 per buyer per car, as part of a 254 million programme to get 6,000
private hydrogen vehicles on the road by 2020.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the California Energy Commission has pledged 130
million to provide nearly 70 hydrogen stations by the end of the next year.
The Californians are also providing more than 8,000 for those buying hydrogen
cars, which takes a considerable chunk out of the cost of the Mirai, which is listed
in America at a cheaper price of 37,000.

The car is filled up at a hydrogen refueling station (pictured). Its super-strength

tank can be filled in ten minutes and lasts for 300 miles
The cars will be more expensive in Britain for the simple reason that car
manufacturers, like tech companies such as Apple, inflate their prices for the UK
market because they have learned over time that although we may complain, we
are still willing to pay more than customers overseas.
The British Government, for its part, has promised 11 million to help provide a
further 15 hydrogen stations in the South-East.
Another issue for these cars is that while hydrogen is found all around us, it is a
difficult element to isolate. The most common method is called steam methane
reforming, which involves mixing steam and natural gas, heating them to 1,500f
and then adding a catalyst, such as nickel, to produce hydrogen and carbon
monoxide. Around 95 per cent of the worlds hydrogen is extracted this way.

Unfortunately, this is not a very environmentally friendly process because of those

by-products. So, although the hydrogen car itself does not pollute, producing the
fuel it needs is a messy business.
As a result, even defenders of hydrogen cars admit that their carbon footprint
in other words, how much energy is used and pollution created to make them run
is at best half that of a conventional car, and at worst considerably more than
that.

Scientists are working on greener methods of isolating hydrogen, such as

extracting it from corn husks, or employing wind turbines to power the electrolysis
of water, which splits the hydrogen from the oxygen.
At present, neither of these methods are efficient enough to produce enough fuel to
power millions of vehicles. Of course, fans of hydrogen cars are adamant that we
need to press ahead because our future depends on running motor vehicles that do
not heat up the planet.
What those enthusiasts will have to do, however, is establish how to manage the
by-products of the cars. Toyota claims that the Mirai only produces 100 millilitres
of water per mile.
That may not sound like very much, yet in Britain motor vehicles travel 303 billion
miles per year on our roads. That means that if every car was a Mirai, we would be
leaking three billion litres of water and water vapour from our vehicles every year.
Thats a lot of H2O around 12,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Of course,
water in itself is benign, but not necessarily if it is being leaked onto cold roads.
Imagine a motorway with heavy traffic in the midwinter, with each vehicle spilling
a litre of water every ten miles. It would turn into an ice rink in minutes. And, if the
water is expelled as vapour, then the predictable result would be fog.

In Reykjavik in Iceland, passengers on hydrogen buses have been alarmed by the

amount of water vapour that comes out of one bus alone.
So while hydrogen cars do sound enticing in theory, there are caveats which must
be overcome if they are to become a commercial proposition any time soon.
Its possible hydrogen fuel cells will become a success used in, for example,
forklift trucks working in enclosed spaces, where petrol or diesel fumes are
especially undesirable.
Whether we will all be cruising around in hydrogen-powered family cars in the
next decade or so, however, remains to be seen.

Walters, G. (2015, May 9). The car that runs on FRESH AIR: It hits 111mph and only
water comes out the
exhaust... no it's not science fiction and you can buy it
here soon. Retrieved January 21, 2017, from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3074298/The-car-runs-FRESH-AIRhits-111mph-water-comes-exhaust-no-s-not-science-fiction-buy-soon-afford-it.html