[M.D. Holloway]

'been looking for the Popular Mechanics, or possibly Popular Science issue circa 1978 to 1980 timeframe in which they took a Ford Granada of 17mpg and put a compressed air tank in the trunk. The car was modified to run the engine at an efficient RPM to pump up the air in the tank. The car ran off an air pump/motor...can't remember design. Braking also provided air pressure into the air tank. Bottom line...the car got 30mpg.

The Honda Insight is a wonderful implementation of energy storage. The other thing to realize is that the "electric supercharge" can be scaled up (why the hell hasn't aftermarket companys seized this idea????) to easily 50 to 100 hp. Now that's a real jolt of supercharged power (compared to tranditional superchargers which take mucho energy at high RPM). Yes, the idea of energy storage with air is for real. Can you use compressed air to "accelerate" a car. OF COURSE you can. You simply don't want to have to PRE-STORE the compressed air. You make a design which compresses the air using the cars own braking.....or stores the energy slowly during normal running like the Honda.'