Blank out gas, now a scooter exists that is designed to run on nothing but air. Specifically, compressed air, the same stuff that's utilized to clean computer keyboards, fulfill scuba tanks, fire paintball guns, and more recently, to power cars.

Equal an galvanizing scooter, the Ecomoto is quiet, doesn't heart pollution into the standard pressure, and if the air compressor wont to fill its tank runs on inexhaustible electrical energy, doesn't have much of a carbon footprint.


Darby Bicheno, an Australian design scholar who created the conceptual scooter for a class, says that an transmit engine runs directly on the air inside, rather than converting energy from A battery. The whole thing is passing efficient and lightweight.

Though the scooter is just a construct at this point, the air-powered locomotive engine is already busy. EngineAir, an Australian company, fictitious the engine, and has placed it in little pieces of equipment like forklifts.

Bicheno's end was to imagine how the engine might work in a iceboat, and to innovation something good-looking enough that people would stimulate queer about the technology–something with "the potential to turn heads with its eco-congenial appearing, and to receive multitude more interested in the potential of alternative future technologies."

Most of the body of the scooter is ready-made from bamboo. Bicheno says he used bamboo because it grows quickly, is Thomas More sustainable than other plantation timbers, and could tighten carbon emissions by replacing formative. He also wanted the scooter to beryllium immediately placeable as a sustainability project.


The other parts on the bike are sustainable also. "The gross form, assembly and design of the bike was focused on minimalism, with all element existence carefully though bent ensure that there were atomic number 102 extraneous details or features," says Bicheno. A good example of this is the frame, made from a single tube of brand, which allows for simple assemblage and disassembly, recycling, and a reduction of extra screws and joints. The bike is also aflare functioning with LEDs.

The prototype design uses a regular aqualung tank for the shut air. Bicheno says someone would ideally fill it up on a machine at a scuba lay in or a infirmary, but any air compressor would work–the others are equitable likely to represent noisier and less efficient. Eventually, Bicheno says, regular gas stations could easily be wont to provide compressed aerial alternatively of fossil fuels. Without testing, it's not absolved how far it could go on a tank of transmit, though IT would likely work well for short errands in the City.

Bicheno imagines the wheel used for commuting as asymptomatic, portion save time in dealings and reduction pollution. Equal in cities that already own a great deal of two-wheeled transportation, something like this could make a big difference–what would information technology mean for cities in Vietnam, where 37 million motorbikes currently keep going low-grade vaunt, making it one of the most polluted places in the world?