For decades now, people have been searching for cleaner alternatives to today's methods of transportation. Air powered cars are just the newest idea to hit the market, but they seem promising. Previous ideas have failed to completely deliver on the idea of clean fuel. Hybrid engines are a good start, but they still involve internal combustion which pollutes the air. Electric cars are an even better idea, but they have run into some serious technical problems. Batteries are heavy and expensive, and the cars tend to not have a very good  range or enough acceleration. Additionally, many of electric batteries pose serious problems when they have to be disposed of. Even hydrogen cars haven't proven viable so far – although they still may yet.

Air powered cars are the newest ideal and, to all appearances, the most promising. An air powered car is just what it sounds like. It is a car driven by compressed air. This might sound silly to people, but air powered toy cars have been around for a long time, so the principal has existed in theory. Trying to put it into practice is, of course, more difficult, but not as difficult as you might think. Air is extremely compressible, and a lot of energy can be stored in a relatively small area.

Best of all, air powered cars don't need to be heavy like battery powered cars do. Even highly compressed oxygen weighs very little, so an air powered car does not have to be significantly heavier than an internal combustion one. Best of all, they seem to be able to offer comparable performance. Many of them can go 500 miles without needing a recharge at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. Not too shabby for a car that runs entirely on compressed air.

Of course air powered cars are a new technology, and the technology has not yet been perfected. One of the issues with air powered cars has to do with power boost. The first generation will probably have a small gasoline engine to generate extra boost during acceleration in the city. Eventually, however, they may get good enough so that this requirement drops out altogether. Someday, we may literally be able to run our cars on air alone. It may seem like a distant dream now, but it is possible. I for one hope that it comes sooner rather than later. After all, who knows how long the environment can afford to wait.