London : French car giant Peugeot has unveiled new air-powered hybrid cars, which will knock 45 per cent off fuel bills for an average motorist, PTI reported.
Driving the car – to be put on the road by 2016 – in towns and cities, costs could be slashed by as much as 80 per cent as the vehicle will be running on air for four-fifths of the time, company researchers say. It uses a normal internal combustion engine, special hydraulics and an adapted gearbox along with compressed air cylinders that store and release energy. This enables it to run on petrol or air, or a combination of the two, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.Air power would be used solely for city use, automatically activated below 70 kph and available for “60 to 80 per cent of the time in city driving”. An average of 188 km a gallon is possible by by 2020.
