BendGovernment

France: Your taxi in Paris is likely to run on compressed air. Sometimes the French seem more frugal than us Scots.

Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.

http://www.mdi.lu/fra/affiche_fra.php?page=citycats

So, French ingenuity allows us to bomb around town all day, [usually less than 125 miles], and there is no suckling at the breasts of Chevron or ExxonMobile. Hey, I like that! A sort of real freedom, at last! = TG

Labels: air car, Air Taxi, battery, Biofuel, compressed air, hydrogen, MDI

This is a Nissan AltimaAV

Major city mayors are doing things concrete to make a clear air difference in places like Mexico city and New york .. ..

** I had the good fortune earlier this month to share the podium in Mexico City with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon when he committed his city (the third most populated one on the planet) to a major initiative of battery EV use by the municipal government. The program will shortly expand to taxi cabs and the hybridization of transit buses.

The following week in New York, Mayor Ebrard joined peers from the 40 largest cities in the world to discuss their efforts to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used that occasion to announce his city's plans to convert the entire 13,000 vehicle fleet of yellow cabs to hybrid vehicles over the next five years.
Brian Wynne
President
ElectricDrive.org
================EDTA

Looks like progress to me. = TG

Labels: battery, buses, electric, EV, EVs, hybrid, hybrid buses, hybrids, taxi cabs