Upvote the awesomeness!
*engineering, *geek - and curse you, siftbot, for not letting me *quality the awesomeness!

Invocations (quality, engineering, geek) cannot be called by Zawash because Zawash is not privileged - sorry.

I'd really like to know what "Powered by air" means?

Is it pressurized air? if it is, then the engine is totally useless, and is only there for show because the compressed air is doing all the work.

Or is the engine somehow pushing air through it in a pneumatic system to move the car, but that would likely require a form of electricity to do, thus making it not powered by air, but moved with air.

I don't actually know, but I assume there is a cylinder of compressed air somewhere running the engine... this doesn't really make it useless, although the practicality of air cars in general is... well... usually limited:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/vehicles/air-car.htm

This isn't an exercise in engineering so much as marketing.

The pneumatic motor is limited by the extreme lack of energy stored in compressed air. All inneficiencies in translating that stored energy into motion are failures in the system. The goal is to carefully remove all unnecessary sources of energy loss from the motor.

So there's an interesting engineering challenge in making this work 'at all' using Legos. There are design compromises that must be made, given the restrictions on form imposed by available parts; as well as the stress limitations of the material. It's like someone giving you a pile of reeds and asking you to build a Manhattan 5-Story Walkup. Can it be done? Is there enough stress resistance in the material for something of that scale? A fun challenge with no practical implications. Manhattan low-rises have been built before, you're not innovating architecture and you're definitely not contributing anything to the future of construction.

The question is, does it require a "technology genius" to accomplish? Someone tell me what a "technology genius" is first. Whatever it is...I suspect you don't need one on your team in order to search the internet for pneumatic piston motor schematics and copy/paste a parallel series of 256.

This exercise is inspiring and fun...until you add the marketing entrepreneur, casting hyperbole around and spending other people's money. It is unsettling to think that the new generation of capitalists are chasing the specter of Elon Musk; self promoting egotists who create nothing and take credit for everything. As a longtime member of the internet in good standing, I reject every stealth intrusion of marketing and entrepreneurship into my sandbox.

Hooray for Raul Oaida, engineering buff and hobbyist. Down with Steve Sammartino, marketer, entrepreneur, "brainchild" originator, keeper of secrete locations, crowd funder, project contact and fathead.