The “Break it Down” Blog

Brad Agdern sent in a hell of an interesting movie from the show Beyond Tomorrow covering the advancements made in air-based engines from the company MDI. The idea being that instead of combustion moving the pistons in the car up and down the car holds compressed air in fiber-carbon tubes that are compressed to roughly 135x higher pressure than the tires of the car (holy jesus) and then fed into the engine to move the pistons up and down.

The only emission is the air out of the cylinder after the piston has moved in much the same fashion emissions come out of cylinders with current combustion-based vehicles.

Refilling the car is amazingly easy: filling up at a compressed air station would take 3 mins, or plugging the car in at home or at work would allow the on-board compressor to self-fill the tanks in 4hrs from empty.

The initial versions of the car will go on sale next year and be gas/air hybrid vehicles providing enough mileage to cross the US or Australia almost coast-to-coast on a single fill with the prices of the cars starting at around $15k.

Check out the episode, it’s really damn interesting: