Is Compressed Air Power the Future for Cars?

I made the mistake of going on youtube this morning for no apparent reason, but it landed me in an interesting place.  I started at the old spice man on a horse to Michael Franti to an interesting video on compressed air cars!  Now, the car video looked like it was made in the 80s and I must say the car was unimpressive, but the technology is what interested me.  So, as a responsible environmental engineer I thought I should briefly analyze the possibilities of compressed air technology and form some sort of opinion on it.

Advantages:

 -Air is free!

 -Cost of refueling compressed air is inexpensive compared to gasoline

 -gasoline is running out so this is a potential alternative

Environmental/Human Health Advantages:

-Air is a renewable resource

-Emissions from car engine will be 100% clean air!

-Emissions from the whole process of compressing the air and firing the small gas combustion engine in the car total to about half the carbon dioxide when compared to toyota Prius, equivalent to 106 mpg.

Disadvantages:

 -Cars don't have the power of our current car fleet (I saw a model with top speed of 43mph).

 -Car must be be very light, and thus there are questions about their safety

 -Production of compressed air at refilling stations and homes will require electricity.

 -from what I studied in thermodynamics I know that not all energy produced in reactions is useful energy, thus the two      reactions necessary to create compressed air results in a lot of wasted energy!

 - the range on a full tank and 8 gallons of gasoline or ethanol is about 100 miles

 -compressed air fill-up stations are uncommon, making long travels difficult

 -potentially dangerous because the tanks are at such a high pressure.

Now I wonder, is this a good long-term solution for our dependence on fossil fuels?  Looks to me that it may be, especially with possibility to have a near zero emissions vehicle (possible with the increasing amount of research in renewable energies for electricity generation needed to compress the air).  Also, for future success the air engine must eventually be independent of the small gasoline engine that it currently requires.

The only issue, and this is quite an issue, is the safety of this proposed car.  Will the cars be too light, and potentially get squashed by larger SUVs and trucks, like a middle school kid playing tackle football with the neighborhood college graduate? Also, is it possible that these tanks can explode if impacted? 

Regardless, there are companies working on selling cars with this technology, although many have recently been having various setbacks.  There was word a few years ago that India's Tata Motors was going to have these in production now, but that obviously hasn't happened.  Who knows if this is the best option for our future, but I think its worth a shot.