1972vet

This new car is designed to run on air (huh?)...yep, air. Well, it does use a very small amount of fuel (8 gallons when full) but even that can be gasoline or biofuel or ethanol or even vegetable oil.

I first thought this was a prank when I saw it as a headliner in the CNN news pages. For the money, it looks like the way to go imho...I just hope it doesn't morph into something like what Ford produced back in the seventies when they managed to retool their machinery and made their small cars big (remember the original T-bird from '53, then look at the T-bird from '78...what were THEY thinking?).

If they can keep that thing running with that kind of efficiency and still make it a little bigger (enough to carry six adults), then I'd say that's going to be what we see on the road here in the near future. I'd buy one...in fact, I should buy stock in the company right now

Just imagine. You would be able to refuel from the grocery store. Pick up a couple bottles of vegetable oil when doing the weekly grocery shopping and we're all set...until the government gets a foothold and somehow manages to turn the price of vegetable oil into a whopping $10 per gallon equivalent.

...Alarm Clock Goes Off:
Vet rolls over...Big Yawn...Sits up...Heavy sigh...well, that was a nice dream while it lasted

Fox

Well, you wouldn't want to buy food-grade veg oil to power a car anyway... most converted diesels can run on filtered waste vegetable oil depending on its consistency and amount of contamination.

They still need a little diesel to start up with though... the veg oil only works when the engine's heated up already. It can't be used to cold start.

I've heard about the air engine as well - it's compressed air if I remember correctly. Pretty neat concept, especially for short jaunts across town in a metropolis. And the real advantage would surely be the cost of maintenance, since an air engine should be relatively simple and not nearly as problematic as a combustion engine.