Driving on air

A new celebrity with a lusciously curved body is turning heads on France´s Cote d´Azur. No, not that kind of body. This one belongs to the AirPod, a 220-kilogram car with a sculpted composite shell and a back-to-the-future energy supply: 80 kg of air compressed to 350 times sea-level atmospheric pressure, roughly 350 bars. The engine of this tiny three-seater converts that air into mechanical energy, just as a pneumatic jackhammer does to blast apart concrete. The AirPod won´t exactly tear up the road, though: The current version tops out at 45 kilometers per hour (28 miles per hour). And yet there´s definitely something addictive in its joystick steering and featherlike suspension. With expanding air pumping its pistons, the exhaust is literally a superchilled breeze. Grab the stick, step on the accelerator, and any guilt you may be harboring from driving an ordinary smog-producing carbon spewer falls away. Wouldn´t life be great if everybody got around town in these clean little machines?