When Tata Motors teased the market with a car powered by compressed air, the buzz around the Web was palpable. The momentum continued when Zero Pollution Motors told PM that it expects to sell the world’s first air-powered car in the U.S. by early 2010. Now the AirPod, ZPM’s three-person working prototype, has made global headlines. The company plans to market the vehicle to tourist destinations in the U.S. So what is all the fuss about an air-powered car? CO2 emissions. Or more precisely—a lack thereof.
The company’s name, Zero Pollution Motors, alludes to the perception that its cars run on air and nothing but air—and wisely so, as that’s its big sell. A tiny car powered by compressed air probably isn’t all that highway friendly, and the AirPod isn’t likely to get you much farther than the distance of the average commute (if that). But the prospect of a radically low-emission vehicle is appealing to automakers, given increasing political pressure to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in a sector that accounts for about 28 percent of all greenhouse gases in the United States. (Only the electric power industry produces more emissions than transportation.) Of course, air needs to be compressed and stored before it can be used to power a car—and that requires electricity. And right now, in the U.S., that electricity comes predominantly from coal.
So is using the grid to compress air and, in turn, run an engine any more efficient than a hybrid’s gas-electric powertrain or even a conventional internal-combustion engine? We crunched the numbers on six vehicles that already have solid environmental bragging rights to find out. Note that this is, in no way, a cradle-to-grave comparison. It takes an enormous amount of energy to build a car and all of its components as well as transport that car to its dealer—not to mention to dispose of it at the end of its lifetime. And, let’s be clear, the vehicles with conventional powertrains are vastly superior in terms of real-world capability. But there is evidence that the air car, should it make production, might be a superstar when it comes to reduced CO2 emissions. Let’s take a closer look…
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