An overview of our novel technologies and designs:

Double acting symmetric piston engine

 Cylinder CAD

Cylinder Schematic

We've created a single piston engine that creates power in both strokes. This gives twice the effective displacement as an ordinary piston engine, leaving us much more room for our tanks. The simple, symmetric design is both easily manufactured and maintained.

Crankless, camless and coaxial drivetrain

Traditionally, both compressed air and internal combustion engines turn the reciprocating (up and down) motion of the piston into rotational motion by a crank. Crank systems are heavy, bulky devices, and engines using them must have cylinders and pistons systems that are complicated, short, single-acting and squat, for reasons of geometry, lubricated in a complicated way, because the piston keeps tilting within the cylinder.

Winch Design

Winch Design

Instead, we use a revolutionary winch system, which is far more compact, lighter and easier to manufacture. Using the system, the piston can move in a completely linear fashion, making lubrication far easier, and reducing frictional losses. Due to the fact that there are no explosions occuring within the engine, we can make our cylinder light, thin, and ultralong, which improves thermal characteristics (it actually helps us draw heat from the environment, almost doubling our efficiency).

It also allows us to make our engine double acting. Such a system would be extremely difficult to make work in an internal combustion engine, due to the internal explosions, but is far easier with compressed air.

All our valves are timed with computer controlled servo mechanisms, instead of the more traditional cams on a camshaft.

The whole drivetrain is designed in a coaxial fashion: the infinitely variable transmission, the planetary gearsets, flywheel, clutch, wheel, and belt systems all share the same axis. This makes the drivetrain strong, efficient, reliable, very easy to assemble, and highly maintainable.

Flywheel kinetic energy transfer and storage system

The most efficient way to run our single cylinder is to use long, slow, powerful strokes. Yet unlike traditional single cylinder engines, which operate at rates exceeding 10000 rpm, such a system would have noticably uneven power.

We need a way to smooth out our engine's unevenness. To do so, we're developing an astonishingly simple, compact and robust kinetic energy transfer and storage system, using a flywheel, a power routing planetary gear set, and an infinitely variable transmission (this layout is similar to the Zero-Inertia Powertrain of Drivetrain Innovations BV). While the stroke is most vigorous, this drivetrain will shuttle power to the flywheel system, and while the stroke is weaker, the flywheel system will assist it, all the while the wheel speed is kept smooth.

The control of this system is handled almost entirely (save for a clutch and a brake) by the ratios of the infinitely variable transmission. But this transmission must be throttled under load with each stroke. Modern traction fluid CVT's are far less prone to wear than their predecessors, but few are design to be constantly throttled under load. We set out to design the optimal IVT for our vehicle. We got fairly far, and then we discovered that the helpful folks at Infinitrak had already done the hard work for us! They were already manufacturing what was our design almost exactly, and we would only need a few modifications for our system. We know good news when we see it. Most importantly, the simple actuation and traction surfaces, the bearing design, and the near-zero normal force due to use of traction fluid instead of friction to friction contacts, will allow simple, easy, efficient, fast, and nearly wearless ratio throttling throughout the lifetime of the vehicle.

Regenerative braking, zero idling

Two of the greatest enemies of gasoline milage are braking and idling. On an ordinary gasoline powered vehicle, all of the energy invested in getting the vehicle moving is wasted once you come to a stop. In electric vehicles, the motor may be run in reverse, as a generator, allowing the vehicle to recycle the energy, using it to get moving again. It's difficult to store the energy though: battery packs don't like being charged and discharged over and over, can't typically be charged as fast as the vehicle can brake, and most commercial capacitor systems don't have sufficent energy density. It also has limited efficiency because the energy must pass through the generator, the storage system, and the drivetrain twice!

By contrast, we have three places to store the energy: our flywheel, our engine cylinder, and our compressed air system (the bladders and tank). By running the drivetrain backwards, we can recover almost all of the vehicle's typical braking energy, splitting the power between the cylinder and the flywheel using the same kinetic energy transfer system used to smooth the power output. And since the energy stays in mechanical form, more of the energy is recovered and recycled.

Additionally, unlike internal combustion engines, we need not idle. Idling internal combustion engines hum along at a low rpm, wasting fuel. Primarily, they do this to be immediately ready, as engines take some time and energy to start up (and wear considerably during this phase). But one is often stopped while driving in the city, or congestion, so idling ends up using a considerable amount of fuel. Unlike internal combustion engines, we don't have to trigger any explosions to get running. We need only open a valve.

Unprecedented degree of computer control

Most automobiles now use computers for many functions, antilock braking, to pick one prominent example. However, engine valve timing, has, until now, been controlled almost entirely by cams on a camshaft. These oblong knobs are placed on a roller, the camshaft, and open valves in sync with the phases of the engine, running faster or slower depending on the speed of the engine.

Major manufacturers are now experimenting with systems to vary their valve timings during the drive. This allows them to achieve greater fuel efficiency. A few of these systems use some electronic control, but none use full computer control.

We use computer control to achieve the highest efficiencies possible, and use valve timings to throttle our engine. We carefully control the torque output of the engine and drivetrain, and precisely manage the ratios in our infinitely variable transmission, in order to ensure a smooth, slipfree, pleasant ride. And because the onboard navigation system is connected to the engine control computer, we allow people to customize the performance settings of their vehicle at the touch of a button.

Onboard navigation system, city guide, and phone, using a helmet display

We bring the modern, connected life along for the ride. Request restaurant or event recommendations with your voice. Ask for directions, and place a reservation with a call, hands free. Or, use the map to help keep track of your friends, riding partners, or family (using software from Loopt, designed especially for vehicles).

Active pneumatic suspension

We're experimenting with a unique, active, pneumatic suspension system. The vehicle can change its posture while driving. This will allow people to brake both safeley and extremely quickly. During braking, the vehicle stretches forward and leans back, as people do when trying to slow down after running, lowering its center of gravity and lengthening its base of stability.

At the same time, this will allow the vehicle to adapt to road conditions, softening to smooth out bumpy roads, and stiffing to make the best of good ones.

Previously the sole domain of luxury and racing vehicles, active suspension systems have been largely passed over due to their additional complexity, requiring another, nonstandard hydraulic system. But we have something the other manufacturers didn't: a large supply of compressed air.

Landing gear

Our automatic, balancing landing gear lowers as the scooter halts, allowing you to come to a standstill in even the muddiest of conditions without getting your feet wet. It rises just as you start off riding, stabilizing the launch of the scooter for both beginners and frequent riders.

Thermal system with a vortex air portal for maximum convection

Expanding air is cool, and our engine has a lot of it. But if you warm air, it increases in pressure. Our engine, then, sucks heat energy out of the atmosphere around it as it expands (one might call us a system for global cooling, were it not for the fact that when we compress air, it heats up). The heat that we suck from the atmosphere is actually converted into mechanical power. This may sound unimportant, but it is in fact quite vital. In our simulations, over half of the energy from our engine is due to this effect, and the exiting air would, were the air within not warmed in any way, it would exit the cylinder at around 20 Kelvin, or -423 Farenheit.

To maximize this effect, we swirl the air in the expanding cylinder by using a vortex air port, creating, in effect, a `windchill', mixing the air just warmed at the side of the cylinder with the air still cool in the center.

We're even experimenting with a crazier idea; partially fill the cylinder chambers with water (with an antifreezing additive), and when filling the cylinders, fill it so as to blow bubbles into it. The rapid injection of air into the water will form a tremendous number of bubbles, maximizing the available thermal contact area, while allowing the water to store and transfer the heat very effectively.

In any case, surrounding our cylinder we have a thermal sleeve, in which we fill a thermal fluid. This fluid is pumped throughout the system, cooling, for example, brakes and clutches and our flywheel as necessary, but most importantly, it is pumped through a highly tuned radiator system, which gathers heat from the environment as efficiently as possible. Since this radiator works gathers heat from the atmosphere, rather than send heat to it, we call it, with our tongue in cheek, an irradiator.

Drink cooler

Since we have a supply of cool, expanding air, let's put it to good use. We include a little drink holder to keep your drinks cool. Imagine it, riding an air powered scooter on a hot summer day, to arrive meeting friends, drinks in hand, perfectly chilled.