I had never heard of the existence of cars that run entirely on compressed air – apparently now on the road in India via Tata Motors – until they were mentioned in an aside during a teleconference discussion of energy policy hosted by the Heartland Institute. I gather that air-cars are only suitable for short-distance driving and that they can’t be introduced in the U.S. without changes to existing regulation on construction standards. But what an interesting example of technological innovation being driven by entrepreneurs that want to serve a market that increasingly can’t afford to fill up on gas, (Perhaps it will be a chapter in a future book by Terence Kealey, who gave a well-received talk at our Atlas Experience on how science tends to advance by commercial R&D, rather than commerce being advanced by publicly-funded science.),In any case, perhaps someone with experience with an air-car can chime in in the comments sections. I’d be curious to learn more on this.
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I don’t know about air compression cars, but I did see a bunch of TaTa cars when I was in South Africa. They’re really tiny and fuel efficient already and relatively popular considering the country produces the lion share of the world’s BMWs.