AIRPOWER: THE FIRST DRIVE
Peugeot 2008 Hybrid Air
On sale: from 2016
Price: circa £16,000
THIS week I became the first British journalist — and one of the very first in the world — to road-test the radical new family car that drives on air: the Peugeot 2008 Hybrid Air, developed by PSA Peugeot-Citroen and German electronics giant Bosch.
I TOOK it on an adventurous spin on frenetically busy roads around the heart of Paris, past landmarks such as the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe.
IT HAS a conventional, but frugal threecylinder 1.2 litre petrol engine linked to a hydraulic air-motor and pump plus a hightech automatic electronic gear system.
DRIVING feels a little different to a conventional automatic car. It’s nimble. A visual display on the dashboard screen tells you when you are in zero pollution or petrol mode. It chugs happily along in town running only on air.
IT CERTAINLY didn’t run out of puff and giving the accelerator a quick burst — vital on Parisian roads to keep you out of trouble — meant the combined force of the 82bhp petrol engine and the 40bhp air motor kicked in together to put wind in its sails.
ECONOMY i s an i mpressive 94 mpg. The engineers’ aim is for a car that will return 140 mpg.
ON sale from 2016 with a less- than-inflated price tag of around £16,000.
THE sports utility vehicle will be the first of a new generation of Peugeots and Citroens running on air and follows earlier experiments on smaller Citroen C3s.
THE revolutionary new engine system is the first to combine conventional petrol power with compressed air — operating in tandem like a bicycle pump and a balloon.
TOP Speed is 108 mph and it will go from rest to 62mph in around 10 seconds. Average CO2 emissions are exceptionally low at 69g/km and it has a range of about 850 miles.
IN ‘AIR’ mode, zero-emissions driving is possible for 80 per cent of t he t i me, with no f uel consumption.
PREDICTED to cut fuel bills around town by 45 per cent and overall by more than a third (35 per cent).
THE air tank is underneath the car and air i s repeatedly compressed usi ng energy retrieved from the petrol engine, moving wheels and during braking.
AIR power — for lower-speed driving in cities — is automatically activated below 43mph.
COMBINED or ‘hybrid’ mode is best for high-power acceleration or hill climbing. Petrol power is best for long-distance cruising.
IT DOESN’T look wacky. From the outside it’s identical to a conventional vehicle because the revolutionary system can be used on any normal family car without altering its external shape or size.
CARS fitted with Hybrid Air will be about £1,000 cheaper than current electric-hybrid models, say PSA Peugeot Citroen officials.
MOTORISTS won’t run the risk of running out of compressed air late at night on a deserted country road, because the car will be fitted with a sophisticated artificial brain that ensures it replenishes itself automatically — compressing and decompressing of its own accord as the car speeds up and slows down.
BAD
A CURIOUS clackety hiss and hum of the air pump when in zeroemissions mode.
NOT the best start when the car suffered an initial technical ‘glitch’ and came to an embarrassing halt — with me at the wheel.
STILL a few rough edges to iron out but surely the finished, showroom version will be smoother.