By IANS
London : A car running on compressed air and backed by the Tata Group will hit the Indian market within a year, says the French engineer who is working on the invention.
Guy Negre’s OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weigh just 350 kg and cost just over 2,500 pounds (about Rs.200,000), the BBC reported.
The project is backed for an undisclosed sum by Tata, which says it may also use the technology for power generation.
The BBC quoted analysts as saying Tata’s backing makes the idea much more marketable and that the Indian company will be putting finishing touches to the engine.
Negre says he will start selling the car in India within a year, the BBC said. It added, however, that the French engineer has been promising a breakthrough for a decade.
“The first buyers (of the compressed air car) will be people who care about the environment,” Negre says. “It also has to be economical.”
The BBC said Tata is the only big firm Negre will license to sell the car and sales are limited to India. For the rest of the world he hopes to persuade hundreds of investors to set up their own factories, making the car from 80 percent locally sourced materials in order to reduce emissions.
The car will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks that can be filled in just three minutes. The tanks will be built into the chassis.
Alternatively, the car can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job.
“For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel,” the BBC report said.