AN AIR HYBRID---WHAT'S THAT?--Carl Schwab

Tata Corporation claims to be planning to introduce into the world car market, a hybrid car based upon compressed air technology. When you stop laughing, read on. Frankly in reading about the Tata Air car, some call it an "out and out fraud", ---others say its claims are grossly exaggerated. So for the purpose of this blog, the writer will try to apply logic to project what things have to be done.

The Tata Nano (and there are others) claims to use an ICE to drive an air compressor and stores the compressed air in a tank or plenum. Air from this plenum is used to drive an air motor and thence to the vehicle wheels. The air motor that powers the vehicle wheels can be operated as air compressor during braking to put air back into the storage plenum. On the surface this sounds simple enough BUT there have to be some real problems or somebody would already be doing it. First the working fluid in this case is a gas, compressed air, and as such follows the gas laws of PV=KT where P is pressure in
lbs/in^2, V is volume in in^3 and T is measured in Kelvin. K is a constant that numerically can be calculated for the experiment. Tata has claimed that their Air Car prototype has produced 52mpg at 60 mph and has a range of 250 miles on a full tank.