​Gasoline is currently the fuel of choice, but petroleum used to make it is becoming increasingly difficult to find and is contributing to environmental issues and worldwide problems. Automobile manufacturers know this and are spending tremendous amounts of money to develop alternative fuel for the future. A few years ago, OWI introduced a Salt Water Fuel Cell vehicle and is now introducing another alternative fuel and eco-friendly vehicle. Let us introduce you to OWI’s Air Power Racer.
Air as fuel…could possibly be another alternative to petroleum. Air is available 24/7, does not run out and it’s free. By golly, we might have something here and OWI’s Air Power Racer can break down this technology to its simplest form. This is an amazing kit that uses the vision of our ancestors back in the middle of the 19th century. Now, your child can bring that vision to life and gain valuable insight into propulsion via compressed air.
Assembly and operation is a breeze for the builder who has experience assembling kits. The estimated assembly time is 4 hours, which makes it ideal for quality time as a parent/child project. A pump-up bar with a pressure meter is built into the car for easy operation. This meter measures the volume of compressed air. The air chamber made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate). The silicon tube (red in color) creates an air tight fit. Another safety device implemented into the kit is a safety valve. If the user keeps pumping while the tank is full, the safety valve will open and bleed the air automatically. Anyway, back to the air in the tank. When the air chamber is full, you can release the compressed air; the air then expands and drives the vehicle a distance up to 50 meters in 35 seconds. The car is fast and furious fun that requires no batteries or specific weather conditions to limit its usage. OWI’s Air Power Racer is not only designed with the environment in mind, but is also fun and easy to build! By the way, a pretty cool factoid is, the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle is recyclable. Recycled PET is labeled with the #1 code normally found on or near the bottom of many consumer products such as fruit containers and water/soda bottles.