The Car that Runs on Air and Magnets
Fri, Oct 17, 2008
Environmental Graffiti Will be Changing Dramatically Soon. Get a Sneak Preview By Signing Up Here.
Image: Magnetic Air Cars, Inc.
With fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling, more and more inventors are turning their creativity towards cars that work without the need for barrels of gasoline. True, there have been a number of vehicles released that run on electricity but now designers are turning to another precious resource – air.
It’s not a new concept, as early as the 1920s, car designers were dabbling with the idea of cars that could run off air alone – one involved cycling air through a propeller at the front of the car – but few came to fruition. Now, designers are again looking at how air can be used to power a car.
Image: Magnetic Air Cars, Inc.
Magnetic Air Cars, Inc, a company based in San Jose, California, recently revealed their sleek new design for the world’s first fuel-less car at the eco convention, West Coast Green. As the name suggests, the ‘Magnetic Air Car’ will be powered through magnetic technology and compressed air. When air is channeled through the engine, the resultant airflow is converted to torque, which in turn powers the axis and propels the car. This process is powered by a silicon energy storage battery, which can be charged in an hour and has a 10-year lifespan and is 95% recyclable, making this new-age creation possibly one of the most sustainable cars on the planet.
Executives from the company have announced they’re planning to build a working prototype soon and could have it ready for full production as early as 2010. Bring it on!
If you want to find out all the latest news on the environment, why not subscribe to our RSS feed? We’ll even throw in a free album.
You Might Also Like Our Friends' Posts From the Intertubes
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else.”
1 Trackbacks For This Post
-
Interesting Reading… – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks Says:
January 11th, 2010 at 6:29 pm[...] The Car that Runs on Air and Magnets – “With fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling, more and more inventors are turning their creativity towards cars that work without the need for barrels of gasoline. True, there have been a number of vehicles released that run on electricity but now designers are turning to another precious resource – air…” [...]
December 21st, 2008 at 7:02 am
Dunno if this will be a hit. Must be worth a fortune to fight global warming.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:52 am
This is an interesting concept.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Looks expensive.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
This is not a car that runs on air, it runs on electricity: “This process is powered by a silicon energy storage battery”.
Without the electricity, no compressed air.
Shameless false representation in the title to boost hits so the website can sell advertising space.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:12 am
French aircar has already made true airpowered cars for over ten years.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:38 am
It’s battery powered. You’re losing energy converting from electricity to air to mechanical… just plug battery to electric motor and be done with it.
And if it wasn’t battery powered – then where does the force for “air is channeled through the engine … converted to torque” come from in the first place? If the air is already compressed, then it’s just a compressed air car, and you’re still expending the same energy to compress the air.
Remember folks, there is no free lunch.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I certainly hope it becomes a reality.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
A simple Google search for “magnetic air cars” yields several entries for this being a scam. (Yes, it did indeed sound too good to be true.) Honestly, just a LITTLE fact checking can go a long way folks:
http://earth2tech.com/2008/09/26/magnetic-air-cars-seeks-funds-for-air-powered-car/
June 10th, 2009 at 9:06 am
An air pump that runs from a battery, which is recharged from any conventional wall socket, which 9 time out of 10 is powered by an inefficient fossil fuel burning power plant, not to mention the power wasted in transmission along power lines. Even better is the more step you place in this process reduces it’s efficiency from start to finish, resulting in even more greenhouse gas emissions.
But at least your not burning fuel from you car.
Ignorance is bliss.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:47 am
well… if you are living in US, indeed you eletric energy is dirty as hell…. in other places eletricity is already produced by cleanner, better power plants. in Brazil, for instance, eletricity comes from Hidroeletric powerplants, that might have a huge enviromental impact, but only ONCE, once it is built and working, it can run for decades not making any gas ans a lot of power…
at least they are making a better, cleanner car, now it is up you your power plants to go cleanner, and better.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:52 am
in 1987, my technical School came up with an ingenious way to power an automobile with regenerative air it was very impressive the only drawback it had was driving steep inclines ..like mountains which was plentiful in my location. This automobile would have been perfect for flat areas like south Florida.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Mark my words…
The makers of this car will be threatened with death, or the death of their loved ones by the oil conglomerates and those with an interest in seeing something like this fail.
It’s a sad world, and those with the most money make the rules… “Drill Baby Drill!”
September 7th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Yes! I hope we can keep getting more cars to run without gasoline since is getting more expensive, electricity and other source of energys are the answer to the gasoline problem
September 10th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Without the electricity, no compressed air ..??
October 9th, 2009 at 4:24 am
GM built an electric car in 1990 that ran only on batteries that were designed and built in Detroit. It was so successful, that Exxon/Mobil bought the battery plant, the rights to the engineering and all the cars GM made and paid everyone involved not to use this technology for 40 years.
Big oil, big money, big power, big influence. They are spending more money on ways to extract more oil from the ground than anyone is spending on all alternatives combined.
Maybe in another 20 years we will see a significant difference.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I pointed out this earlier but will try to point it out even more simply for the ignorant i.e. uneducated.
Unless the overwhelming majority of the developed nations, and those large developing nations, convert to renewable power sources (i.e. solar, hydro, wind etc. . .) then the use of purely battery powered vehicles is a waste of time.
Whilst the end user may not directly consume fossil fuels, when they charge their cars or vehicles from the wall socket they themselves are drawing from the electricity grid. A grid which in most regions is powered by coal or gas fired power plants. This has been proven to be, in the long term, the most inefficient ($) and most polluting (CO2 & CH4) method of producing power.
Even Hydrogen-Oxygen fuel cell powered cars are inefficient without the renewable initial power source. This is due to the fact that the most efficient (albeit inefficient) method of getting both Hydrogen and Oxygen in the correct quantities is through the electrolysis of water, which again is horribly inefficient.
Hybrid cars, however are slightly different as they use electromagnetic brakes that recharge the batteries as the car brakes, thus making them more efficient.
What is worth investing in is the aforementioned alternative energy sources which do not (for the large part) contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
Please do not think that I am trying condemn the efforts of reduce global warming, quite the opposite I support and invest in local wind farms.
As always I welcome further intelligent comments.
Freak.
January 1st, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Compresssed air is horribly inefficient.
This has all the inefficiencies of internal combustion engines on top of the inefficiencies from the conversion losses of charging and dischaging batteries…. and the electricity to charge the batteries comes from where? A fuel-burning power plant (because these cars will be adding to the load on the grid, and we’ve already used up every hydro-electric dam spot, and the eco-morons won’t let us use nuclear, and wind power? give me a break…. Solar-electric cells…you’ve got to be kidding.
More eco-science fiction NONSENSE that will never made it to the main stream (unless the police start killing people for using something else).
January 15th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Everyone with an understanding of physics can see that what he is suggesting is causing the rotation is nonsense.