<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LizardKing:
As far as alternitively powered cars go, i think any of them that require electrical input are silly, since for the most part those cars are powered by coal, and less efficiently to boot.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Aya! I'm afraid our friend McGizmo was right. (Gee, Don, how'd you ever guess?) Here I am again. You've gone and dissed my mama.
This thread is about air-powered cars, and I'd like to learn more about them. I'll apologize early for my off-topic rant here, and hope that it can be continued
here if you would like to continue the discussion.
The EV that my family drives 50 miles/day (on average) is the single most efficient full-function automobile (meaning it can carry full-sized humans at comfortable highway speeds for reasonable distances) on the planet. My particular car is NOT fueled by any energy that pollutes. My electricity comes from solar, wind, hydro and geothermal sources exclusively.
And to clear up any misconceptions, even if my car were powered by the US's dirtiest power plant, it would still be cleaner to operate than today's most efficient gasoline engines (hybrid cars). Many reasons for this: First off, producing gasoline uses roughly the same amount of electricity per mile driven as an EV. So once you've produced a unit of electricity (doesn't matter if it is dirty or clean electricity) you now have a choice: Power an EV down the road with it, or make gasoline. Makes EVs sound a bit cleaner now, doesn't it? The oil/gasoline industry is the single biggest consumer of electricity in the US. The next biggest reason EVs are so efficient is that they manage to put better than 90% of their stored power to the pavement. An internal combustion-engined car manages about 15% on a good day.
OK, against strong urges, I'll leave it there. I'd love to discuss this with you further if it interests you, but I really don't want to drag the focus of this thread away from the air-powered vehicles. Please see me
here
Edit: Oh, and no, my EV engine is NOT air-powered. But I do like the AirHogs. They're great!