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Sunday 18 January 2004

Air powered cars [slim]

I'm not a mad nutter greenie, but I do like to try a bit, and me wife tries a lot. We recycle an awful lot, we compost a lot, we feed animals with a fair bit, and I drive a Yaris which is a little bit more efficient than your average car. Mostly we recycle our rubbish because we're a bit remote and they don't collect it as often as they do in town so it collects up and pisses us off, we're driven to recycle not out of brotherly love, but because it makes our lives a bit bettter. This is probably a more realistic motivation for actually getting people to do stuff that's good for the planet. Greener cars have a similar problem, they're available now, but they cost big wonger, and don't actually give you much back in return other than the thought that you might have fended off the next ice age by about five mins.
But how about a car that runs on air? Nice thought eh? The Minicat does. It's french, sadly, but apart from that, it's got a lot going for it. It's apparently going to cost about six grand, looks ok, does 60 mph with virtually no plannet harming emissions. So far so reasonable, but what's in it for me? The designers have two hooks, firstly theres bugger all to it, a couple of compressed air chambers and a very simple motor, so you've got very little in the way of servicable parts. The second hook is that it'll do 125 miles at a compressed air cost of about a quid. Sold!
Course the problem with this kind of thing is that it still needs power to compress the air, so you still have pollution from powerstations. This is true of battery cars too, but at least here you've no heavy degrading acidic batteries filling up landfills. There's also a chance that while your puttering around in your air car, someone might manage to clean up power generation a bit too. At the very least, you're not choking kids in towns, your just choking the ones who's parents can only afford a house near a power plant. Final downer over battery is that it's a cylinder engine, so it's about as noisy as a petrol car.
But for a six grand outlay and less than a penny mile, who gives a fuck?

23 comments:

  1. For a moment there I thought this was a serious article, but then I noticed you said 'looks ok' so clearly you're jesting?

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  2. 3 seats ?Well that's fine if you only want to use it to go to and from work, or only to take the kids to school, but if you've got a big family, or all want to go out together yer shagged.Oh, and it's pig ugly too - It's the first thing I've ever seen which looks worse than the Smart car.

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  3. You miserable pair of fucking british whining fuckheads. A quid a fucking mile! Of course there's compromises, and the prototypes arne't exactly ferrari's, but it's six fucking grand, not sixy. Miserable bleating cunts the pair of you!

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  4. Wah it's a green-car that doesn't fit my 158 sprogs in it and look like Lambo wah!

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  5. With the money you earn and don't pay in tax I'd have expected better looking aspirations than a suppository with wheels. fuck the environment.

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  6. A quid a mile ... I think you got confused there Slim. Anyway, its a fine idea, and I'd be happy to have one when they do a bigger model which looks more like a car and less like a turd. I don't expect it to look like a ferrari - I wouldn't want one if it did - and I don't expect it to be fast - I rarely get over 60mph these days - and I don't need it to have an absurd number of seats, I only have two kids FFS. Lurks, if you've got 158 kids, you should get in touch with the Guinness book of Records.
    Anyway, Slim, let us know how you get on with it when you've got yours, and then we can decide whether to risk it :-)

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  7. Your attempt to make me look unreasonable by suddenly moderating your argument is a little uncalled for I think. Slim and I were both dismayed that when something cool comes along which is a herald of the future, two of you just pipe up and slag it off. Honestly, don't bother!

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  8. You're right, I'm a complete twat.

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  9. London is trialling the new hydrogen powered buses; the only output of which is water. I was stood on Tower Bridge the other week when it drove past, and aside from the noise of it crunching a bit of gravel, it was completely silent, and very wierd.

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  10. Hydrogen is a fab bit of tech, but those busses cost £1 mil each, so it's not the kind of thing you our I are going to be trying out any time soon.

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  11. Gah... I like the design. I used to own a Ka. I'm overweight and wear glasses. Shit! I'm Slim's doppleganger*
    Nice to see you are doing your bit with recycling, you've got to make an effort, you are trying not to fuck the land for your kids, afterall, not some neutered, woolly-jumpered, speccy, bearded, sandal-wearer.
    (Shit, that *is* me!)
    This cunt-bubble car only has three seats, and it's suitable for doing the kids run and popping to the Spar... which is 90% of the traffic on the road... you can still have a big fuck off family car for those oh-so-essential 'family trips' out.
    * It's German for double-ended dildo

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  12. I was thinking, why don't we see more one seated cars? Something cheaper than smarts, say 3k, with only one seat that people who don't want to lose their legs on a motorcycle could drive?

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  13. now *that* I could go for - I never take anyone to work with me, so a single seater would make sense. Plus it would probably get better acceleration, better mileage etc, since it would only need half as much car.

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  14. Bollocks to that, we'll all be commuting on this baby:
    www.gizmo.com.au
    Homepage-ish, www.brp.com

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  15. How leet is that. I want one now!

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  16. I ride past tailbacks every morning on the way to work and its amazing how many cars/mpv/4x4/estates only have one person sat in them!!

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  17. that one alfa sent .... its got a magnesium frame. Isn't that a bit dangerous given how magnesium burns ? Still, the idea of a car which does around 280 miles to the gallon is pretty damn good - I reckon I spend more on petrol in a year than on insurance or maintenance for my car.

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  18. If I recall correctly, the magnesium alloys in common use don't burn like magnesium does. At least that was true of the mag-alloy cases on consumer electronics, which are kind of in vogue at the moment. I would have thought they'd do the same for cars.

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  19. not to mention that they have used magnesium on bikes and in cars since forever!

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  20. Highjacking the argument slightly....given this is a perfect opportunity to share with you the fact that I think all this domestic rubbish recycling is bollocks. Its the same principle as the collection of metal for planes during the second world war, people donated saucepans and the like, all of which were just thrown away because there wasnt a metal shortage - they just wanted people to 'feel good'.
    Coupled to this is whose bloody job is it to recycle anyway? I dont get rubbish operatives to come into my office to help prepare accounts!
    Of course the main motivating factor for this rant is Di's obsession with recycling - I have been woken in the middle of the night with Di standing accusingly over me brandishing a empty plastic milk container saying ' I found this in the main rubbish bin - not the plastics one - you uncaring bastard!'
    I swear to god I've taken to sneeking my rubbish out to the boot of my car and dumping it in a skip on the way to work so I dont have to 'sort' the paper out....

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  21. Oh look, SUV-driver isn't a greenie shocker :)

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  22. The other thing about recycling is that its hugely expensive in terms of energy required to get the material back into a usable form again, and this offsets any potential environmental gain by chewing through a load of fossil fuels.
    Then there is the fact that the companies doing the recylcing profit from the dilligent work of unsuspecting wannabe greenies.
    My wife had a go at me for not taking the lids off the bottles that go in the bottle recycling bin, she goes 'people working on the conveyor belt at the recycling plant will have to take those off' to which I replied 'so what do they bloody well get paid for?'And whilst I'm on the subject of conservation etc.
    Here in Victoria there is a massive campaign to save water, it seems they don't have an effective water recycling program in place like in the UK.
    Ads in the paper, on telly, all about taking 4 minute showers, letting washing build up for a while and not leaving the tap running and doing your washing up in a bowl, stuff like that.
    But the thing is, whilst leaving a tap dripping is an offence punishable by death, taking a 20 minute long shower isn't - I just don't get it. Everyone here is really concerend with saving water as long as its not them that has to do it.
    Oh look! the next door neighbor had a glass of water, SINNER! But now I need to go hose down my 4x4 etc etc
    I don't really care though, when the state dries up and the ground cracks I'll just fly home
    Rant over

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