Truemors
AirPOD
Guy Negre, the formula 1 engineer got a boost during economy crisis, Nice city buys his public 3persons Airpod vechicle, produced at Nice France. The rent a car will be available all over the city for clean air powered transport. To recharge with electric compressor in one Hour. The range of the Airpod 200 km, 45km speed limit, no drivers license necessary. A long way for Guy ignored a long time.
Joystick Drive
The 3-person city hopper has no wheel, just a joystick to drive the air compressed car, called MiniFlowAir. India Tata and the US bought the licensese for the bigger compressed air car up to 6 persons for US. Recharge over household electricity by air compressor
SOLAR driven Air compressor 0-emission
The moderate power needs during recharging is also to manage by the portable home solar PV Recyclo Electrobox with 230 V AC outlet, presented at the Lighting Africa worldbank event 2008 by Agropark. Final Assembly Europe -Africa 2009. US version 110 V AC available 2009, 250/500 W solar and biogas hybrid portable energy kit.
ECO Valley Nice-Var, green production
Now in the crisis the Mayor of Nice Mr. Estrosi gives local green production a boost, buying the car for transport also Nice Airport to city hotel. Good news in bad times. Green economy makes money.
MDI, the company created by the French engineer Guy Nègre, has released today a new vehicle to be "powered by compressed air", the AirPOD, a name that tries to associate the car with one of our days icon, the iPod, from Apple. As well as the MP3 device, MDI's AirPOD is compact and has an original design. We just can't say it is exactly elegant or beautiful, especially considering it should be a car.
Besides the compressed air engine, the AirPOD has another unusual feature: a joystick instead of a steering wheel. All controls, as the ones in Venturi Volage, are "by wire", with no mechanical connection among components.
Considering it is a 2.07 m long, 1.60 m wide and 1.74 m tall covered car (it looks like a trike, but it has two hidden wheels in the front end) with room for four people (three adults and one child), it had to save space for its passengers. Direction is given by different speeds in each of the rear wheels, another similarity with Volage.
Very light (only 220 kg for the passenger version), it can have its 175 l air tank recharged in a mere 1.5 minute (at 350 bar!) and is able to run up to 220 km, with a top speed of 70 km/h for people with a driving license.
In France, there are vehicles that can be driven by children and people with no driving licenses in regular city traffic. For these people, AirPOD's top speed is limited to 45 km/h.
MDI declares AirPOD will be the first car to be series-produced, by the end of the first quarter of 2009. It will join three other vehicles: OneFlowAIR, a convertible, MiniFlowAIR, a small city car a little bigger than AirPOD and CityFlowAIR, a mid-sized vehicle able to carry six people. Prices are said to be incredibly low when compared to similar sized vehicles, especially if they are electric
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