The myth of the compressed-air car
Here.
^"Everyone considering compressed-air storage for motors overlooks the cost of the compressor and the power plant needed to run the compressor," Schipper says. "A compressed-air vehicle is an electric vehicle using compressed air as storage."^
^Last year, Schipper co-authored a study showing compressed air's inefficiency: per volume, it contains only 12 percent of the energy in lithium-ion batteries and 1 percent in that of gasoline. Worse: as clean as it sounds environmentally, the air vehicle isn't all that clean—but the emissions come from the power plant instead of the tailpipes.^