Using compressed air to power cars is something people have experimented with since at least 1840. That’s when two French men named Andraud and Tessie tested such a gaseous vehicle on a track. The eco-friendly automobile ‘worked well,’ reports the air-car lobby, which exists, ‘but the idea was not pursued further. ‘

Why not? Perhaps because making a practical, well-working model is damnably hard. But India’s Tata Motors is pushing the technology forward, inch by inch, with its project to build ‘Airpods’ – zero-pollution, cute-as-a-bug smartcars that zip along at 40 m.p.h. via the magic of squeezed air.

Sadly, these vehicles do not function by farting out a loud stream of gas that propels them forth. They instead are built with pneumatic motors that use pressurized air to drive pistons. In the case of Tata, a company that’s developing a line of ‘nano’ cars (including this bulletproof dwarf tank), the engines come from Luxembourg firm MDI, which has been tooling around with air automation for more than two decades.

Tata bought the rights to sell MDI’s creations in India five years ago, but the project’s proven difficult to get popping. But in May, the motor giant announced that it had completed the […]