The MDI Aircar

As the push to find cleaner alternatives to Fossil Fuels accelerates one new car company is planning to make a car that runs on thin air. using compressed air the MDI Air Car is capable of a top speed of 110 km/h and can travel 300 kilometres on one tank of fuel and at a cost of just a penny per kilometre. All of this at "zero pollution". In fact the car cleans the air it uses!

The secret is in the state of the art engine, instead of relying on petrol to create the explosion that in turn makes the engine turn, the air car uses an air engine which takes the compressed air from its tanks and used this to make the engine turn, this leaves you with an exhaust of plain air.

The MDI vehicles will be equipped with a range of modern systems. For example, one mechanism stops the engine when the car is stationary (at traffic lights, junctions etc). Another interesting feature is the pneumatic system which recovers about 13% of the power used.

The MDI car body is built with fibre and injected foam, as are most of the cars on the market today. This technology has two main advantages: cost and weight. Nowadays the use of sheet steel for car bodies is only because of cost - it is cheaper to serially produce sheet steel bodies than fibre ones. However, fibre is safer (it doesn´t cut like steel), is easier to repair (it is glued), doesn´t rust etc. MDI is currently looking into using hemp fibre to replace fibre-glass, and natural varnishes, to produce 100% non-contaminating bodywork.