Newswise — Outside of Nice, a small company called Motor Development International (MDI) is developing a city car that runs off a tank of compressed air. The company's founders believe that this approach solves the problem of advanced lithium-ion batteries--they are just too expensive to be used in vehicles.
There are many problems, however, with using compressed air to power a vehicle. The most significant is that a reasonably sized tank cannot hold much energy in this form. Also, it's difficult to release what energy it does hold quickly without causing ice blockages to form in the engine's air-feed lines. MDI is claiming that one of its designs, the AirPod, will be manufactured and sold in large quantities within a few months. But the company has a history of failing to deliver on promises, so it's impossible to predict with any certainty when this vehicle will actually hit the streets.
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