Nov 4 2008Coming Soon: The Air Car Pod

Is it just me, or is there some rule that says that the better the car is for the environment, the stupider it has to look?

more gay than little pink poodles riding the tea cups at Euro Disney...

Raise you hand if you car looks like it should be driven by a homo!!!! Know how I know your gay? You drive an airpod. I could see Tom Cruise in one of these... not simply 'cause he's gay, but also so that he can be safely beamed up to the mother ship.

Annnnd it looks photoshopped.

Annnd TCLTC

Annnnnnd, pew

@1,

Do Cars Really Need to Look Like UFOs to Save Gas?
http://gas2.org/2008/09/15/do-cars-really-need-to-look-like-ufos-to-save-gas/

I wouldn't mind driving the Aptera.

so do i get in it or do i put it on?

It looks like a granny smith green apple. With holes made by worms and birds and such. omg im throwing up. i love the environment.

FAKE!!!

This is an obvious photoshop job. You can tell its fake because the shadows are all wrong.

This looks like Max's little sisters toy car from the movie Never Back Down.

And I thought Volkswagens were uncomfortable cars to have sex in...

PEW PEW PEW *I'm stuck*

Daisy please stop using my great name to insult the intelligence of all the loyal readers of Geekologie. That job is mine and mine alone. P.S. I'm super cheap on ebay! Get a copy now!

i'm sure the pile-ups on the interstates from these bad mothers will be minimal. and the first time one of the compressed air tanks explodes will be eventful.

@LSDiesel and Sharpie - Haha...I got GW to chat shit for me. I rule =D Hmmm...yeah that was fun.

How would you go to a drive through strip place like mr geekologie posted to us a few weeks ago. id have to park sideways and get grand view

Hmm...yeah. That was so fun XD

@AJ - That was pretty damned priceless...

Just like this "car" is pretty damned flamin!

It would be more appropriate if you entered from the rear.

@Thumperchica
- I was just paying them back for showing me hostility a few weeks ago when I voiced an opinion. I think I did that pretty well for a revenge. XD

@16, Yes AJ, you totally ruined my spirits and made me lose my will to live. In fact, I started smoking again and even the simple things in life have lost all pleasure.

Okay. Big Deal. You got the GW to talk shit for you.
You totally ruined any impression of badass when you started to gloat about it, so you're still a skid mark in the underpants of society.

cant wait to see this thing get blown of the highway by speeding eighteen wheelers.

Vanity Plate reads: "VIRGIN"

I'm sure these will show up in hip hop music videos pretty soon. Some art director will bling it out with massive 22" lo-pro spins and make it sparkle with a gold and diamond finish.

BTW - I wouldn't want to be in a cross wind in that thing. Also, just imagine driving down the "wrong street" into a bad neighbourhood...you be dead.

AND you will never see these on the streets in the USA. They won't pass any safety test. If they do allow it, I can only imagine the warning labels etc. let alone the endless lawsuits from any accident. This company will go t*** up before one of these hits US soil. Europe can keep their homobiles.

@Daisy: why you sais is an obvious photoshop job? I am a professional graphic designer and I can tell you that there are no artifacts.

Besides, how you make compressed air? I don't think I could manage to do it with my lungs. Therefore, I would use something like a compressor, that usually needs energy or some kind of fuel. Do I miss something?

Andrea miss something.

@LSDiesel.
- What's the point in doing something like that if you can't gloat. Gloating is the only reason I did it.

That car is bigger than my apartment. Golf cart with an ugly green helmet ring a bell?

For those that are interested in a real air powered car that doesn't look like my left nut with gangrene:

http://magneticaircars.com/pressrelease.htm

Safer than a motorbike.
More economical than a car.
No local pollution.
More range than a car.

Think outside the box, people !

Incidentally, while this is safer than a motorbike in an accident, it has no visibility, so is more likely to be in one.

i had no idea that clowns were so economical! 50 of 'em could carpool cross-country for less than the cost of a funnel cake.

what they don't tell you is that the compressed air is in your lungs and the front wheel which you can't make out is actually the dude's feet. flintstones cars had to come back sometime. this thing better f***ing fly for $20,000.

@AJ, When Han Solo shot greedo, did he stand up and announce "Hey Everyone, I just killed this Bounty Hunter! Aren't I awesome!?"

No. Just got up, apollogized for the mess, and left.

I can't think of a single place I could drive this. I probably drive faster than 35 mph in my garage.

I LOVE IT!!!

It gets 100mpg cause it has no motor...it's a flintstone car, you use your feet to propel it!

Err...I failed, someone beat me to it. I can see it now, Air Car gets recalled for spontaneous combustion and ease of getting tipped over.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

im not sure, but um... there's no steering wheel... all i see is a joystick... And how am i to bang your gurl friend in something with all those windows!!!

Come on people, THINK!!!

This thing runs on compressed air, but compressed air ain't free. You need to have an air compressor, and those run on, *GASP* electricity (or straight fossil fuel if you've got a huge one)!!!!

They already make these things in India, and they are NOT zero-emission. They just conveniently move your emissions elsewhere. And you're riding on top of a huge bomb. Oh, and they still need to pass safety certification, which is almost impossible as long as 18-wheelers and Hummers are legal.

Don't believe this fraud will appear on the road, or that you'd be doing the planet a favor by driving it.

Do the windows roll down? My girl friend has stinky farts, she's a vege ya know, and with that little of space I would like pass out. Even if she is riding in back like a good girl

i wanted to make the first air car in america nooo why are all my dreams ruined so quickly

Is it just me, or does that "car" look like it's made out of foam?

I get those with my legos.

*put they small grey block into the big white block......*

FALSE .... between 3500€ and 5300€

See http://www.mdi.lu

Well on the side of technology it is the state of the art but on the side of the design is good for Japan or China or Europe, it would more suitable for a motocycle working with air power plant !

The day this appears on the US market and on US roads is the day I believe that MJ wasn't a pedophile.

yawn.

the "makers" of these things are totally pulling a Duke Nukem Forever, pulling in lots of gullible investor money in return for not really much but a promise that "it'll be on the road next year, or maybe 18 months".

it's been about that far in the future for at least a decade now (i think i remember reading about it online thru my high school's one and only 14.4k, strictly time-metered modemed-up 486), just like the flying car or DNF, just close enough that it seems like a tangible prospect for your next new car, but far enough away that they don't have to give us any practical prototypes just yet. because guess what... the amount of energy you can store in an air tank is shockingly small. for the same weight and about the same complexity (and danger) you can have a much smaller hydrogen tank, a modest fuel cell and an electric motor, and still go faster and further. or batteries, even. I've been diving. I've seen what kind of motor drives the compressor that takes my 12-litre tank up to 3000 PSI. It's a happy crappy little 4bhp generator job, and it takes about ten minutes per tank. You're not going to get more power out of the compressed tank than you put in. My commute by *motorcycle* takes THIRTY minutes and uses an average of probably 5bhp (11bhp bike running at about half throttle with periods of full and periods of none). Each way uses about 0.75 litres of gasoline, or a pint and a half. So just by bike, to get to and from work, we're looking at six rather heavy air tanks. A fully enclosed, 3 or 4 wheel multi-seat vehicle will need far more (the reason why i try not to use the car for commuting - its 3x less efficienttah). The air car isn't going to cut it for that kind of travelling.

Wake me in 2025 when they finally perfect a way of safely storing the air at 60,000 PSI in a 15L container that can be lifted with one hand without straining yourself and doesn't explosively decompress when mildly impacted. In the meantime I'll be over here with my much more compact, (relatively) lightweight, more quickly filled, slightly-less-prone to painful explosion when the container's ruptured, chemical methods of storing motive energy.

wait a minute, having reskimmed the article, did I read that right?

it can extend its running range ... using a small gasoline motor ... that compresses the outside air... to keep the tank topped up...?!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ok... ahaha.. =cough= ... so just using a scooter motor and drivetrain to directly turn the wheels wasn't simple and obvious enough, instead they had to waste a whole load of energy by transferring the motive force through pneumatic means? making a whole load of waste heat etc in the process? and completely destroying the supposed "it makes no emissions!" point of an air car in the first place?

or am i getting it wrong, and it actually plugs the engine's exhaust port directly into the air tank (presumably via the world's strongest and fastest acting double-gated one-way valve, to avoid it instantly stalling out after performing one power stroke), in a modification of the old VW Bug engine based compressors (where one half of the engine had the intake pipes cut off from the compressors and the ignition leads removed, and the exhaust pipes used as the air output line, whilst the intact other half of the engine provided the compressive force)?

Whatever. It's still one of the dumbest things I've heard so far. Sort of like they heard of the idea of diesel motor-generators and hydraulic drive as used on construction site vehicles, and the ol' gas-fuelled series hybrid car, and decided to make it a whole lot worse for no good reason.

I'm sorry, I'm a european, I love functional little cars with a sense of style, and good economy, and futuristic electricness and all that. And this is still bad.

As James May said about the FCX Clarity and the Tesla - they're great because they prove that eco friendly transport doesn't have to be about nasty snails-pace punishment boxes. The air pod is taking us right back there. God, 35mph? That's moped speed. The Model T Ford was faster. The Austin 7 and original 2CV were faster (just). Several start-of-20th-century electric cars beat it, in fact (and if hooked up to modern batteries would probably whip it on range, too). Even the first generation GWiz, roundly mocked for being slow as all crap, is faster. Bear in mind that a vehicle's top speed is quoted for running on flat ground, in still air, around a circular bowl proving ground track with your foot on the floor for several minutes. You take that thing up a hill and you'll be obstructing traffic. You pull away from a stop light, and it's a similar story.

My ultra-budget vacation hire car was supposedly good for about 100mph, going by the handbook specs, and made a comfortable 75-80 without being too stressed on the open autopista (and nearly cracked that 100 the one point I gave it its head), but on the protracted foothill roads of inner Andalucia it had severe trouble maintaining 60 (foot down, 3rd gear, needle hovering between 90 and 100kmh) whilst larger-engined vehicles sailed past, and was sometimes embarrassed off the line by senor mcrandom even when I floored it. Similarly my bike is good for 65, but a major incline can knock it back to 50 or less (luckily, I tend to only use it on slower, inner city roads), and if I want to get out ahead of the pack I have to thrash the everlovin' crap out of it.

Apply the same maths to the airpod, now... Even in the congested, laid back, low speed limit towns of that same area, it may have struggled. Transport it back home to Birmingham UK, where a lot of the streets are 40mph (or more!), and even the common 30mph limits tend to a cruising speed of 35, and it's heavily outclassed. 60/100ths of 35 is a mere 21mph, and even 50/65ths is 27 - so even speed-limitered 50cc mopeds will be ekeing past it and its red faced, $20k worse-off driver.

I'll keep my $2000 jalopy with its 106hp, mid-30s MPG when driven moderately, 400+ mile range and seating for 5, thanks.

the air pod cost $3000 not $20000