New Motorcycle Runs on Air?

A couple of university researchers from Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle. Here's an excerpt from a report by Jessica Marshall from Discovery News:

"We may be driving on air in the next few years. That is, we may be driving vehicles powered by compressed air, instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.

Researchers Yu-Ta Shen and Yean-Ren Hwang of the National Central University in Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle, which uses the energy in compressed air, rather than gas, to drive the motor." -- Jessica Marshall, Discovery News

Of course, the real benefits of such a system might best be achieved in an air-powered automobile that has more room to house the bulky mechanism necessary to pull this off.

Let the alternative fuel games begin.

Here's the complete story. Feel free to comment on this story in the Comments section, below.

More Efficient Motorcycle Trike Engine - It's About Time

I got an email from a company in Australia that makes GTM trikes. I was not familiar with GTM but am interested in trikes.

It seems that GTM has been making trikes for awhile using VW engines and has just signed a deal with another company, Revetec, to provide them with a new type of engine called the X4v2.

The X4v2 provides much higher torque than the VW engine, especially in the lower RPM ranges. This results in much greater acceleration and increased fuel economy. That caught my attention. I was beginning to wonder if anyone out there was even thinking about engine efficiency to help us poor riders try to beat the high price of gasoline.

I know when both my wife and I take out our Gold Wing trikes we end up getting killed with double gas cost as well as double toll costs. Our governor here in New Jersey is now proposing a plan to help pay off the state debt by raising tolls 800 percent! To even manage my costs I may have to go to a single trike, take the back roads more often, and try to trade the trike in on something that gets more than 28 mpg.

I don't know if the Revetec technology will pay off in Australia but I thought maybe you'd like to take a look at a video of the trike in action. Maybe someday, we can get some more efficiency out of our own trikes. I'm not holding my breath.

Take a look at what I currently have on trikes. If you own a trike, send me a picture of it and I'll put it in my Trike Gallery.

The picture above is courtesy of Revetec Holdings Limited.