http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561&videoChannel=1

Why the hell isnt this getting even bigger buzz?  I know its not the first, but if this thing turns out to be really true then sign me up for one.  Yeah it may look fugly and have 200 squirrel power but it'll save ya money on fuel.  Hell, you could even pee in the damn thing and it'll run. :thumbup:

unfortunately I can see the patent to this process going the same way as the last patent of a water running engine, ie owned by shell and never put into production to protect themselves

Quote from: gengoro on June 14, 2008, 08:57:37 AM
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561&videoChannel=1

Why the hell isnt this getting even bigger buzz?  I know its not the first, but if this thing turns out to be really true then sign me up for one.  Yeah it may look fugly and have 200 squirrel power but it'll save ya money on fuel.  Hell, you could even pee in the damn thing and it'll run. :thumbup:

Generally large corporations will find a way to get the inventor to sell the patent and it will never be heard from again.

I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, and while it's true that the oil industry and car manufacturers have done nothing to help foster the development of alternative fuel vehicles, there are also some very real engineering-related reasons why you don't have a "water-powered" vehicle in your garage right now, despite the technology being widely available for decades.

The "water-powered" car is basically a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle. It doesn't run on water per se, it uses the hydrogen extracted from water. That hydrogen is then fed into a fuel cell, where it is used as a "fuel" in a chemical reaction to generate electricity.

The key innovation in the "water powered" car is that the electrolysis (the process of extracting hydrogen from water) now takes place in the car itself, instead of in an external facility. This is an important innovation since one of the problems with the use of hydrogen fuel cells is the prohibitive cost of storage and transport of hydrogen.

Even with that, though, a "water powered" hydrogen fuel cell vehicle faces an uphill battle. Electrolysis is a very inefficient way to extract hydrogen... it often takes almost as much energy to extract hydrogen from a volume of water as that which is produced from that same volume of water. In many cases of purported "water powered" cars, the electrolysis process is actually powered with another power source (a chemical battery, for example), which can be pretty ridiculous on the face of it, since it's more efficient to run a motor directly off of the chemical battery instead of going through the painstaking and expensive process of extracting hydrogen from water and then using that to run a fuel cell.

A "water-powered" hydrogen fuel cell car by itself, in practice, isn't going to be any more cost-effective or environmentally friendly than an electric vehicle that runs on rechargeable chemical batteries (Like Li-ion polymer batteries), since the process of electrolysis still requires an external power source. To have a truly environmentally friendly and cost-effective vehicle, the "originating power source" from where the power is derived to do hydrogen extraction or the charging of batteries should be a renewable resource like solar power, hydroelectric power, wind power, or geothermal energy

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Car that runs on water?

We've had these for a while, they're called boats.

heh I'm getting That 70's Show flashbacks.

OOh! I want one.
:wub:

strike that, I want one car, and an additional water unit to power my house.

IF it was reasonably inexpensive, I'd want one to drive back and forth to work.  I'd even break down and buy Japanese-manufactured.

The battery used to power the car's power plant could be charged up at home (or wherever).  I'd be willing to bet that it's more energy-efficient than a pure electric car.  Some of the energy loss could be reclaimed via an alternator-type mechanism (though I'm no engineer).

All it has to be is more energy efficient than a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine and less vulnerable to the whim of the marketplace for fuel/energy.

I'm guessing it won't replace the family minivan for quite a while, though.