The long awaited Air Car ranges from the co-efforts of Tata Motors and a French firm MDI is blocked away on technical snags. The car was to have run on the roads purely on compressed air as the only fuel. The technical aspects quoted for the problem are vehicle ranging, low engine temperature and cooling, according to the VP of Tata Motors. Basically air is treated as an energy replacing a fuel but not a full-fledged fuel like CNG. Hence this sort of problem is common for such vehicles.
The pact between two companies was inked in 2007 in a bid to sweep the technological expertise of Tata and its licensing in India. In addition, Tata was contemplating on hybrid buses to be able for city commuting, an electric sub-one tone cargo carrier Ace and the electric version of Indica. Tata’s CNG and LPG versions of Indica are on the roads under ‘zero km fitment scheme’.
Tata is in the news for its hithane project to spike CNG as a combination of hydrogen replacing tailpipe emissions. According to the company’s MD for the Indian operations, electric Indica will be launched in Norway, UK and Denmark in another one or two years.The Indian market would be assessed on the basis of cost factor and the lack of electricity will also be taken into account, he said. The cost of the battery would be on the higher side as the car would use lithium-ion instead of ordinary lead-acid batteries. The Europe market can expect electric version of Ace in the next year.