While they are not for sale yet (that I know of), I don’t think it will be long before the world will start seeing the MDI OneFlowAIR or MiniFlowAIR’s on the road everywhere. After all, who wouldn’t love a car that runs only on air? No petroleum, no alternative fuels, no batteries – just compressed air tanks that can be refilled at home or while driving down the road. The company, MDI (Motor Development International), is also planning a “dual engine” version that incorporates a combustion engine as well, which will enable you to take the car far away from home as you would a normal car, but use only compressed air within the city or your town. And for all those countries that are just getting into buying and owning cars, this could be great to allow them to A. have cars like the rest of us do and B. not contribute the extra pollution that would go hand in hand with millions of new cars hitting the road each year.

To keep the weight of the car down, the chassis is tubular, as in racing car engines and motorcycles, to produce strength at a very light weight. And the body is composed of a fibre-glass or hemp fibre, which is also incredibly light. Refilling the car will take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air.

From the website:

Two technologies have been developed to meet different needs:

* Single energy compressed air engines
* Dual energy compressed air plus fuel engines

The fruit of more than ten years of researches, MDI’s mono-energy engines operate on a totally eco-friendly basis using compressed air stored at high pressure.

These engines are used on vehicles designed for urban use, backup generators or industrial tractors. They are particularly tailored for applications where the torque has an importance and when an averagely moderate power is needed.

Together with the zero pollution engines, some other versions having the same technical basis have also been created by MDI, they are known as the dual-energy engines. In the case of dual-energy engines, an energetic adjuvant (petrol, diesel, oil, alcohol or gas) is burned in an external continuous combustion chamber. These dual-energy engines have more range and the amount of toxic gases released is very low.

* Less than two Liters per hundred Kilometers (at 90 Km/h for MiniFlowAIR)
* Zero NOx,
* 3 to 4000 times less unburned HC compared to conventional engines.
* 3 times less C02 emissions in comparison to classic engines.

From the looks of it, they have 3 car designs in mind, 1 camper, a bus/delivery van, and then concepts for tractor/generator uses. If they can make this work on a bigger, “whole world” scale, it will certainly be something.

The car is being planned to come in several different model sizes – Family, Van, Taxi, Pick-up, and Mini-Cat, the smallest of the bunch. And while kind of odd-looking compared to the cars on the road today, I would definitely drive one. Hopefully, MDI will get all their manufacturing and licensing permits lined up and start getting these vehicles out into the market!