Old Photo-Air driven car

[Herb Iffrig]

I wonder how that worked.
Would it have been vanes like in an air drill or impact wrench?

[George Andreasen]

I studied the chassis and frankly, I'm not sure what I'm looking at.......

I see a massive storage battery at the rear. I see what appears to be an electric motor at the front. I see what looks like two inline compressors between the frame rails and some other mysterious device on the opposite side.

Going by that, it seems a battery/electric motor operates two compressors which provide air for whatever type of "motor" this guy has designed. Or maybe the compressors are actually the motors? No sign of an air storage tank that I can see.

Holy cripes Batman! Why not just use the battery and motor to run the thing and skip everything else? Looks like another case of an inventor with a idea that's cumbersome and over complicated.

[John Codman]

You mean that my sailboat with an aircraft engine and propeller blowing air at the sail isn't practical

[Kohnke Rebabbitting]

I hope he didn't use the Battery, for a seat! The seat of his pants would have fell out! LOL, I have seen that happen, more then once.

Herm.

[Novice]

Looks like a A/C electric motor up front with a starting capacitor ? mounted on the right side. There does appear to be a air storage tank in front of the rear axle. and perhaps air control valves behind the electric motor. Looks like they used the electric motor to run compressors to fill storage tank and then reversed the operation and used air compressors as a drive motor. The use of the large battery I don't have a clue. What a contraption ! Rube Goldberg would be proud.

[jaxenro]

"A working model of an air-driven hydraulic motor, involving a new principle in automobile reconstruction, had been perfected by F.E. Kenney, Portland, Oregon, mechanical engineer. The machine is operated in much the same way as a locomotive or steam engine, except that air pressure instead of steam pressure is utilized as motive force. Power is derived from a small electric motor run by current from a storage battery. The motor operates an air pump which keeps up pressure in the tank. The compressed air, mixed with oil, is admitted to two hydraulic cylinders, where it drives the pistons"

https://www.gettyimages.fr/detail/photo ... /516475768

and an entire book devoted to compressed air technology circa 1900

https://losttechnology.org/wp-content/u ... 4_1900.pdf

[HPetrino]

It's actually a very early "Zero Tailpipe Emissions" car. The only thing wrong is that he was about 100 years ahead of there being a market for such devices.

[Mark Gregush]

For us greenies out west in Portland Oregon, just ahead of the curve.

[Scott_Conger]

The Greenies must be really ticked that over 1/2 the power they consume comes from imported coal and natural gas...and since Oregon has virtually no source of fossil fuel, all of those $$ go out of state. I'm always amused at folks that are so proud of their clean electric cars...they almost always end up burning coal to make the chargers work. It is good for their self esteem, I suppose. I have a couple of friends with electric cars and I know it nearly kills them to restrain their moral superiority over me when we're together. Sometimes they look like they're going to pop. I am always sympathetic to their silent and sometimes not-so-silent suffering, though, being that I am a sensitive guy and all. The good news is the US has around 150 years of coal in the ground, which today can be burned quite cleanly. Add the time we've been adicted to electricity, to the present-day known resources in our country, and we're not even at mid-life along the coal-fired electrical technology use/curve. Technology will continue to advance (unless we're all dead in 12 years due to climate change)

[HPetrino]

One of the things I remember learning (or maybe just hearing) years ago is that generally when we use fossil fuel to generate electricity 1/3 of the power consumed goes out the exhaust, 1/3 is lost in transmission resistance, and 1/3 is delivered to the user. If that's even partially true it would be very interesting to factually compare energy use and emissions of our traditional internal combustion cars with the electric units so popular now on a mile for mile traveled basis.

[Scott_Conger]

I'm sure on a mile/mile basis, electric would slay Internal Combustion. I just did a 1,000 mile round trip pulling 8K lbs with my old diesel PU truck. Every time I needed to renew it's energy source, it took about 2 minutes. The hotel I stayed at had free 10 Tesla charging stations (it was a college town and it seems every college town has new hotels with charging stations...not that anyone uses them). They would not refuel my truck for free.

When electric can pull that load, recharge in 2 minutes every 8 hours of use, and someone will give me free electricity to do it, I'll be all over it in a New York second.

[BobD]

One of the things I remember learning (or maybe just hearing) years ago is that generally when we use fossil fuel to generate electricity 1/3 of the power consumed goes out the exhaust, 1/3 is lost in transmission resistance, and 1/3 is delivered to the user. If that's even partially true it would be very interesting to factually compare energy use and emissions of our traditional internal combustion cars with the electric units so popular now on a mile for mile traveled basis.

35 to 40 percent efficiency is about the best that can be squeezed out of a typical coal fired power plant. The exhaust heat out the stack (exhaust) is mostly recovered by regenerative air heaters and economizers. However, the plant is its own best customer requiring large electric motors in the range of thousands of horsepower for driving such auxiliaries as boiler feed pumps, induced draft and forced draft fans. Another source of parasitic power is the particulate precipitator and the sulfur dioxide scrubber.

Transmission line losses from the step up transformer at the plant to the step down on the consumer end are comparatively small. One source quotes 8 and as high as 15%. To factually compare energy use and emissions of internal combustion cars with electrics on a mile to mile basis, one is going to find all kinds of statistics out there. Our electrical energy grid is a mix of sources, thermal, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. Lots of things to factor in.

[Peter, Memphis TN]

I'd be interested in a comparison, not done by someone with a pre-conceived idea, that disregarded all the other supposed statistics, and simply compared the CO2 produced by a modern gasoline automobile per pound/mile traveled, vs. the CO2 produced by several different types of power plants, to charge the batteries to drive the same weight car the same distance.

After all, the Greenies are hung up on the CO2, not the cost of anything.

Obviously, power generated by wind or water would win hands-down. Power generated by atomic, I don't know but it might win as well. But, power generated by coal or natural gas would probably lose, I guess, although modern methods of 'scrubbing' the exhausts would help.

Then, factoring in the percent of all electricity produced in the US by each source, you would probably find that a gasoline-powered automobile would lose. After all, 2 or 3 of the 5 methods produce zero. That's hard to beat.

After you'd done all that, factoring in the actual cost of producing and distributing the 'cleaner' electricity, including waste disposal costs, would probably tilt the scale back to very nearly even. I think.

So the real question is not about "saving the planet," but "How much automobile use are we willing to give up, to save what's probably a very small percentage of the CO2 produced?"

[George Andreasen]

Moderators........not trying to turn this into a political thread by any means, but.......

I watched a fascinating video about a British research team drilling ice cores at either the north or south pole (can't remember). The cores were analyzed for gases and particulate matter going back almost 300,000 years. They found a massive increase in carbon dioxide on a regular and cyclic schedule throughout the tests. In other words, CO2 occurred naturally and normally during earth's history.

Now, I'm fairly certain Ford wasn't building cars at that time, and for that matter mankind had hardly mastered fire by then.

Back on topic........I wonder if the inventor submitted his idea to the patent office? If so, there should be a written record and possibly drawings that might explain his idea.