The car of the future that runs on air

[AsahinaKimi]

Game changer: Using Peugeot Citroen's Hybrid Air technology, a Citroen C3, shown at the Geneva Motor Show 2013, will get around 34 kilometers per liter driving in the city — a notable improvement on the fuel economy of electric hybrids. | NORBERT AEPLI

by Tim Lewis

The Observer

Mar 30, 2013
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LONDON – There was a sense, when I arrived in Paris a couple of weeks ago, that France was if not quite in meltdown then certainly enduring a profound existential crisis.

Unemployment had metastasized to 10.6 percent, and the country’s credit rating was in the dumps. President Francois Hollande’s maligned plans for a 75 percent “supertax” had sent some of the most famous French citizens scuttling to Belgium.

In November 2012, a cover of the Economist magazine showed seven baguettes tied with a tricolor, a lit fuse poking out. The article warned: “Mr. Hollande does not have long to defuse the time-bomb at the heart of Europe.”

French manufacturing, in particular, was on its knees. Worldwide sales at carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen were down 8.8 percent in 2012, the sixth successive year they had decreased. Three of its biggest markets — Spain, Italy, Portugal — were even less interested in new cars than France. The company had announced plans to shrink its French workforce by 8,000, almost one-fifth, over the next two years. Workers responded with violent protests, burning tires and cutting power cables.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/30/world/the-car-of-the-future-that-runs-on-air/#.UVXZFzeDo5h

[HappyMe]

1. I'm holding out for the flying cars

we were promised years ago.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Actually it does not nor cannot run on "air"

Air has no energy content

[AsahinaKimi]

3. "The car did not solely run on air, of course"

"The car did not solely run on air, of course; the new technology was twinned with a petrol engine. "

"The pressurized steel tank is filled with around 20 liters of nitrogen, plus some hydraulic fluid. Much like a Prius, Hybrid Air vehicles recover energy every time the driver brakes or decelerates. But instead of using this kinetic energy to charge a battery — as electric hybrids do — the Hybrid Air system has a reversible hydraulic pump that compresses the hydrogen in the tank and then unleashes it the next time the driver pumps the accelerator."