MDI’s Air Powered Car – The Future is Here!

Posted on February 29, 2008
Filed Under Economy, Technology | Leave a Comment

This car runs on nothing but air, reaches speeds of nearly 70 mph, and runs for 125 miles before needing a recharge that takes a whole 3 minutes. Yes the car is for real, and expected to be available in showrooms as soon as August 2008.

The man behind the Air Car is Guy Negre, who was a Formula One racing engineer in a previous life, but for the last 15 years he’s been at MDI in Nice, France perfecting cars that use compressed air instead of internal combustion to move the engines pistons.

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The air is compressed to 4350 psi and stored in tanks under the car. The high pressure (roughly 150 times the pressure in your tires), was a concern, but by making the tanks of carbon-fiber instead of steel, they’re lightweight, stronger, and will just split versus exploding in a crash.

At gas stations equipped with custom high-pressure air filling units, it would take only a few minutes to recharge the tank – about the same or less time than a gas fill-up. The cost for the 340 liters of compressed air would be about $2.00. 

Drivers could also just plug in the cars on-board compressor at night and recharge the tanks in 4 hours.

By adding an engine that powers the compressor for recharging on the go, a hybrid model has been created that could take you from Los Angeles to New York on a single tank of gas.

Is anyone else thinking “where can I get one now?”

It’s not always so, but in this case, the immensely practical comes with a reasonable price tag. The Air Car models will range in price from $7,500 to $25,000.

MDI Air CarAn agreement has been made with Tata Motors, India’s largest automaker, to begin producing the world’s first commercial versions of an air-powered vehicle. The CityCAT, at $12,700, will be one of the first of approximately 6000 of these zero-emissions Air Cars scheduled to hit Indian streets in the summer of 2008.

In addition, MDI has made deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.

Will we ever see these in the United States? I’d like to think so – in fact yesterday would be good continue reading….

Quitting Smoking Again – Week 16: Am I There Yet?

Posted on February 15, 2008
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

Just a brief update for those following along with me on this stopping smoking journey. It’s been 4 months without a cigarette and I remain certain I’ll continue to be a non-smoker. I can honestly say that not only don’t I want to smoke, but I no longer feel the need.

Surprising perhaps, at least to me, is I haven’t used this space to vent during the process, but I can’t say there have been any really, really bad days. There have been a few that were very hard, but nowhere near insurmountable. Change of venue often helped – i.e. I would just do something other than whatever I happened to be doing at the time.

quit smoking journeyNo doubt success in quitting this time is partly due to the learning experiences of all my previous failures. One of the classic ruses a smoker will use to give themselves permission to start smoking again, is to get someone to tell them to. That way they don’t “fail” at quitting.

Lots of times smokers don’t even realize they’re doing this. The way it works is we (the one trying to quit smoking), being a bit edgy or anxious anyway, start getting short with people, begin provoking arguments, and finally become confrontational over something silly.

That process will eventually get all the participants worked up into a good “mad” generating all sorts of emotional and verbal hostility. With that combination of short tempers, and frayed nerves, sooner or later someone will say something along the lines of, “I liked you better when you were smoking, I wish you’d go have a cigarette”.

Bingo! We’ve been forced into smoking again, because even quitting smoking isn’t worth the price of damaged relationships. This is especially true when it’s friends and family were sparring with.    

The rationale taking place in the mind of the smoker is that they didn’t give in, but rather circumstances conspired against him or her and for the “good” of all concerned, they had to smoke.

Things like this no doubt sound absurd to anyone who hasn’t tried to quit, or been close to someone who has. But it’s a real trap the “quitting” smoker can fall into, and just one of a zillion reasons folks who desperately want to stop smoking will fail. continue reading….

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