Cars Fuelled by Air: Guy Nègre and MDI (updated Feb 08)

I had never heard of Guy Nègre and his company Moteur Developpment International until tonight when I read a Times of India article about the Tatas collaborating with them. It is fascinating-- Nègre has designed an engine that produces momentum by releasing compressed air instead of using combustion of fossil fuels as in other engines! And these air powered engines would be running cars. A huge drop in pollution! A huge reduction in dependance of fossil fuels. Reduction in costs. Wow!

Guy Nègre is based in Nice in southern France, their prototype factory is in southern France too (Nice?). The company is Luxembourg-based (tax reasons?) while the official representatives are based in Barcelona. Nègre has apparently had experience working with aeronautics and racing cars, and started the company in 1991 to develop his dual-energy engine which ran on petrol and compressed air, as a low-pollution engine. Some of the technical information about the engine can be found here (see remark on the links in the update at the bottom of the page) .

They are developing two kinds of vehicles, the first with limited use would only run on compressed air and would have a maximum speed of 50km/h-- thus probably used only within city limits. The second would run with a dual-energy system-- with compressed air for upto 50km/h and (fossil) fuel at speeds higher than that (or when the air cylinders are empty) and would have a maximum speed of 110km/h. There are several models under development.

The compressors can be recharged at envisaged gas stations-- 2 to 3 minutes for around 1.5 EUR. Alternatively, a built-in small compressor could be connected to a power supply and recharge the tanks completely in around 6 hours. A fully charged car can be driven for 200km.

Oil (1l vegetable oil) would need to be changed only every 50,000Km.

MDI asserts that the compressed air cylinders are completely safe because the same technology is used to carry liquid gas in buses, or used to transport methane, a flamable gas, and hence potentially explosive.

Another interesting feature would be its radio controlled (hence wireless) connections that would take care of headlights, dashboard lights, lights inside the car etc with a microcontroller.

Costs: The compressed energy only cars would be expected to cost upwards of around 6,860EUR while the dual energy cars around 9,460EUR upwards; plus taxes, minus subsidies.

They still have no idea when these cars would be available in the market. They also make a request:

We need, among other things, people to talk about the project. One way to help is by putting links to our web page on your site. If you are a journalist and can write an article about the car we would be grateful. Finally, if you know any businesspeople who you think might be interested in the project, speak to them about the possibility of participating.

If you have been reading all this, I would strongly urge you to check out their website (although I admit it isn't very easy to navigate).

This is technology of the future (near future actually) and needs to be supported. I am very glad that the Tatas are collaborating on this and are involving in financing this.

I am really excited about these cars.

Update 13 Feb 08: Late last year, I had seen rumours on the internet that the Tatas would release their air car in mid-2008, some even said that it would be announced along with their Nano. The Tata Motors was rather tightlipped, and instead commented that the technology needed further fine-tuning. Subsequently I read that the deal was that they could release it in India only after Nègre/MDI released it in the European markets. The BBC has an article today that says what this fine-tuning might be (I say this because I don't remember having read about this feature earlier):

For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.

Especially since I'm moving to India in a few weeks, I am really looking forward to this car. I had been hoping that they would start selling the hybrid later this year, and that'd be my first car. My cousin-in-law (who has a Tata car too) said that Tata cars are great, but aren't so great when they are first released. It might be more sensible to but a cheap car and by the hybrid a year or so after it is released. Let's see...

Further update: The MDI links don't work anymore. They have changed their website design, and the new site is absolute crap, totally devoid of any relevant information. I'll leave the links as they are, and change them later if I find better links.

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Let's Talk About the Weather

No really, the weather... I do want to talk about the weather. In fact I was talking about it in another group-blog where one was supposed to talk about anything in an open thread and I blabbered about the weather, and then realized it wasn't quite the nonsense I'd intended to post, so I thought why not copy-paste it in my own blog. With some modifications.

I thought spring had followed after a mere two weeks of winter after Christmas (ok, there had been some snow in early Nov like every winter I have spent in Europe... nine of them). Even the allergic have started sneezing, so the flora must have started pollinating prematurely, and I was even told so by the Allergy Specialist I'd visited earlier this month (I was actually supposed to visit her after my allergy season got over, i.e., in June). But the weather forecasts said the temperature was supposed to go down today, and it was supposed to rain and then snow all night… and they've forecast snow all week. I’m sitting inside, so I don’t know whether it is colder now. No, I just checked-- doesn't really feel very cold outside. It hasn’t rained, at least not that I have noticed... no, I am quite sure it hasn't, and it has certainly not snowed yet. Probably tomorrow morning when I look out of the window, I’ll see snow all around.
I do like snow… good snow, not the slushy stuff that’s more rain than anything. But I do hate it when the snow melts under the traffic and refreezes in the morning to make crossing the slippery roads difficult. I also dislike bringing in a kilo of small stones with my shoes.. the stones that they scatter on the pavements to prevent people from slipping. But winter somehow doesn’t seem complete without snow and the cold any more. Am I actually looking forward to it?! Who would have thought?!

I met Othmar the other day in the underground station. He had threatened in 2005 that I would be persuaded to go skiing. When we met in summer 2006, he exclaimed that I had managed to lie low during winter just to avoid skiing (wasn't exactly true, but I wouldn't mind doing exactly what he accused me of). And there would be no escape for me this winter. So as I was saying, we bumped into each other on Thursday at the U-bahn station of the Westbahnhof and since I was early and was to wait for Fabien, and Othmar had time, we chatted for a bit. It was looking like there would be no winter and spring had started, I said gleefully, almost referring to the ski threat. He said no, he was convinced that it would get really cold in February and there would be snow. Lots of it. And then there would be no escape for me. We still have to see about that, but it certainly looks like it will snow sometime this week. If not tonight, perhaps tomorrow or later.

The weathermen here must be nervous. The forecasts haven't been that great of late. Large parts of Europe was reeling under storms (Kyrill) last week. We were supposed to get it on Thursday night. It was supposed to be terrible. I was up till 1 am on Thursday night (Friday "morning"), I could hear strong winds, but not much of the stuff that had happened in Germany. I didn't see much evidence in the morning either, although Martin at the lab said that he'd heard the storm all night, and that apparently it had been pretty bad in northern Austria. Well, one couldn't see much in Vienna. People were saying they were almost disappointed. I confess I was too. Kyrill had apparently moved on eastwards to the Czech Republic. Today's forecast was rain from the afternoon, turning into mild snow and proper snow at night. I can't be sure, but it doesn't look like there's been any rain, forget snow.

Austrians would of course be delighted. They can finally go skiing. They were all so glum because they couldn't go skiing nearby. The warm weather was also resulting in huge losses for the ski resorts, many of which had to transport snow from higher alpine regions. But apparently even that snow wouldn't stay because the ground was relatively warm.

This year they do expect weird weather. In fact according to the BBC, the UK Meterological Office says that this'll be the warmest year ever (in the UK? in Europe? in the World?), El Niño is to blame.

Ruben had offered to bring me Al Gore's film on Gobal Warming, but always forgets. The film apparently shook him. I should remind him again to bring it. Some really scary stuff has already started to happen. A 66 sq km chunk of ice was discovered in Dec 2006 to have broken off the Canadian Arctic in summer 2005. They fear it will float away during summer and cause havoc on oil and gas exploration, oil rigs, and shipping. Even otherwise this is scary. Apparently if the sea levels get higher as a result of melting ice, a large part Bangladesh would risk being submerged.

Europe is trying hard to do something about Global Warming. Hopefully they (particularly Angela Merkel's friendly relations with George W. Bush) and the newly muscled Democrats would be able to nudge a change in US policy.

It is almost 1:30am, and it has still not started snowing.

But we live in hope...

Update at 8:49 am:

1. It did snow last night, though probably not much... I can see some snow on the ground in the lawn in the University of Music and Performing Arts opposite my window.

2. BBC says today, Chief executives of some of the largest companies in the US have urged President George W Bush to introduce measures to tackle global warming.

Update on 5 Feb:

1. Minor editing and one major one-- I had attributed the film to John Kerry instead of Al Gore... I am of course talking about An Inconvenient Truth about Gore's campaign to get Global Warming recognized as an urgent problem.

2. It had indeed been snowing that whole week and on Friday Othmar called up at around 2pm to suggest that we go night skiing or snowboarding. I didn't have good enough arguments until he said that we'd have to start at around 4pm to get there... I got my chance... I had to be at work at least until 6pm! He sounded rather pissed off... poor chap :-)

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