Just forwarding the info I saw on future cars. It's a reputable show and I assumed that the information they conveyed was well researched. As I said above, i'm by no means an expert on this subject, they were the ones that said they planned on attempting it so don't shoot the messenger. Go search for the video if you please, I really don't care. I'm not going to waste my time arguing a point that someone else who has done the research made to people that would rather insult someone than consider what information they are giving, and give a information backed response.

 

For God's sake READ THIS BEFORE you respond again!!! YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You aren't forwarding the info you saw accurately so don't try to give credibilty to your response by claiming you saw it on TV. You did but you are not passing on the info correctly. That's the problem. You are claiming that it's damn near perpetual motion when it isn't and YOU have called US closed minded for not thinking so. We're not insulting you. We're correcting your physics violation. It's not perpetual anything! I even showed you on air car's own website how it in fact works and it's not like you think it does. Do yourself a favor and STUDY IT. I have given you an information backed response complete with links to the actual source! At least learn how something works before you try to pass on information about how it works. Once you get your information right, then you can try to argue it. Until then you are being corrected.

 

I don't know what's more funner - watching AirBoy torture the laws of physics , or watching RG try to convince "AirHead" there is no free lunch !

S

 

i just sit back and watch, with my popcorn

 

lol, this is halirious.......still, would be fun to see airhead here blow up when a rock rips a little hole in his compressor

 

Anything is possible if you imagineer it!

 

don't worry, by that time, Mr. Fusion will be available and we can create nuclear powered cars RG

 

The point of air cars isn't to have a perpetual motion machine, the point is to have a car powered by grid electricity, and have it actually be affordable. That way you can use nuclear, solar, wind, whatever. Plus they don't have to have yearly smog tests I assume.

It helps if you think of it as a really affordable electric car with decent range that can juice up in 10 minutes. Actually, there are batteries that can do that now, but they are still expensive, and putting 480V power into a car is probably not something carmakers want to do. Certainly this is a vastly more realistic "green" alternative than hydrogen cars.

 

Ok, stupid mistake, I misinterpreted what I saw/heard and assumed the information(which I got wrong) was on the site. I'm wrong, I get it.

 

we are all wrong at times. its all good

 

fision and fusion are no closer to perpetual motion than a coal boiler or ICE are. A closed water system is a far cry from a closed thermodynamic system. Any thermal (steam turbine) power generation system can use a closed water system, whether it be coal or oil fired, or heated by nuclear fision. Most nuclear systems are closed because there's a chance of the water in the system becoming irradiated, and it would be bad if that was released into the atmosphere. The nuke plant near me actually uses 2 closed water loops and one open. There is a closed loop for the reactor, which goes through a heat exchanger to the turbine water, which goes through a heat exchanger to sea water to condense it. (The plant is Seabrook, NH.)
The only reason fision and fusion seem like perpetual motion is because their fuels have such high energy density. Uranium has about 10,000 times the energy density (by mass) of gasoline. So 1 lb of uranium is about the equivalent of 1600 gallons of gasoline.

 

well you are right about the fission not being close to perpetual, but fusion is close. look up a machine called the tokamak. it is one of the reactors that is being tested

 

There's no such thing as close to perpetual motion. It either is or it isn't. If it cannot run for an indefinite amount of time with no external input and without a loss of energy, it's not perpetual motion. Fusion uses extremely energy dense fuel which is very abundant. It also uses atomic reactions rather than chemical reactions. Other than that, it may as well be a coal boiler.

 

I realize this has become a perpetual motion thread but just to clarify the Government 35 mpg mandate:

It doesn't mean ALL cars have to get 35 mpg or better. Just the manufacturer's fleet has to AVERAGE 35 mpg. You can sell all the Hummers you want as long as you have some high mileage cars to offset the poor mileage ones. And just in case you cannot even meet that requirement, you pay the government a penalty for every 0.1 mpg you're fleet's under the limit - just like Daimler-Chrysler, BMW, Ferrari, Aston Martin, etc. did because their fleets were under the CURRENT limit. I won't even get into carryover credits that can tide a manufacturer over year-to-year (which helped Ford from paying even though they were under the limit this year too) or that manufacturers get credited for 15% more mpg than the sticker says.

Excuse me now while I go back to the "Inventor Accidently Ignites Saltwater with Radio Waves" thread.

 

Hydrogen is not very energy dense, the amount of energy needed to induce fusion is extremely high, but once it starts going then it's self sustaining and the energy produced by it is extreme.

I think air cars will actually become more widespread in the future. Tata (I think it's them, the indian car maker) is ramping up to start producing air powered cars in india. When we talk about small in-city commuter cars like the Gee-Wiz or the Smart, fitting them with air power makes more sense than small electrics, you get a similar range with no tailpipe emissions and if you happen to run out of air you can reload in a matter of 5 minutes using either a plug in compressor built into the car or at an air filling station. Whereas the electric will take hours to charge to full.

No, there is no free ride, you need to use energy, very probably generated from fossil fules to charge batteries or compress air, but the efficiency of a power generating plant is far far better than that of a normal internal combustion engine.

You can also run the compressor or battery charger with a gasoline engine built into the car, the difference being that compressing air is only limited by how much power you put into it and is much faster since batteries have to charge against their internal resistance and that is what makes them take hours and hours to charge.

So comparing completely clean tailpipe emissions, the air car is actually superior.

And comparing air cars to hydrogen powered cars... air is explosive under pressure, sure... but hydrogen has to be liquified to be stored, so you choose between liquid hydrogen spraying everywhere which will kill anything it touches, or a big air (non flammable) explosion. My real point is, the technology is out there to make pressure tanks that can take a car crash.

 

anyone got popcorn?

 

hydrogen itself doesnt have a lot of energy, but a specific isotope of hydrogen does. its called tritium. if you have watched spiderman 2, doc oc speaks of it as the fuel for fusion, which it is. if we did get a fusion reactor running correctly, it would be perpetual, or at least last ALOT longer and produce wayyyy more energy than a fission reactor.