Air Car coming to US as early as 2009

Remember the Air Car that we wrote about a week ago? It’s beginning production in India soon, but it looks like it might make it Stateside as early as 2009.
Zero Pollution Motors has said that it expects to produce the world’s first compressed air-powered car for the US by late 2009 or early 2010. The company plans to produce 10,000 Air Cars per year. The first of the models to be produced in the US will have six seats, a top speed of 96 mph, and can travel as far as 1000 miles on one tank of air. It is expected to cost $17,800.

The Air Car concept is very cool, but so far it can’t compete with the 6 and 8 cylinder gas-guzzlers we are all used to driving. It will take some more time before compressed air engines catch on, but we love to see this kind of innovation. More and more technologies are being developed to replace conventional fuel, and this is one that has potential.

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.

We’ll believe that when we drive it, but MDI’s new dual-energy engine—currently being installed in models at MDI facilities overseas—is still pretty damn cool in concept. After using compressed air fed from the same Airbus-built tanks in earlier models to run its pistons, the next-gen Air Car has a supplemental energy source to kick in north of 35 mph, ZPM says. A custom heating chamber heats the air in a process officials refused to elaborate upon, though they insisted it would increase volume and thus the car’s range and speed.

“I want to stress that these are estimates, and that we’ll know soon more precisely from our engineers,” ZPM spokesman Kevin Haydon told PM, “but a vehicle with one tank of air and, say, 8 gal. of either conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel could hit between 800 and 1000 miles.”