Compressed air car The principal disadvantages are the steps of energy conversion and transmission, because each inherently has loss. For combustion engine cars, the energy is lost when chemical energy in fossil fuels is converted by the engine to mechanical energy. For electric cars, a power plant's electricity (from whatever source) is transmitted to the car's batteries, which then transmits the electricity to the car's motor, which converts it to mechanical energy. For compressed-air cars, the power plant's electricity is transmitted to a compressor, which mechanically compresses the air into the car's tank. The car's engine then converts the compressed air to mechanical
Binding energy Binding energy Binding energy (also called separation energy) is the "minimum" energy required to disassemble a system of particles into separate parts. This energy is equal to the mass defect - the amount of energy, or mass, that is released when a bound system (which typically has a lower potential energy than the sum of its constituent parts) is created, and is what keeps the system together. If the energy supplied is more than the binding energy, then the disassembled constituents possess non-zero kinetic energy. In general, binding energy represents the mechanical work that must be done against the forces