Did anyone else hear about this?

[1BiGG1]

I'll agree with that. Japan is the BASF of the world. While they don't invent much, they do make inventions better.

<pinching myself> “OUCH! WTF!” “Yeah I really am awake but are my eyes going bad or something as I could swear I just read Jason_els and I agreed on an issue.” ….. “Nope eyes are ok, must be that glass of wine I had last night was spiked with gasoline or something!” :biggrin1:

 

[JustAsking]

This is a hoax, unless they are simply not telling the rest of the story.

 

[2322]

This is a hoax, unless they are simply not telling the rest of the story.

OK, when you say something like that, I take notice. What makes you believe this is a hoax?

 

[2322]

Here's an animation showing the water-to-hydrogen process. Anyone read Jive-- er, Japanese?

 

[TurkeyWithaSunburn]

Japanese invent car that runs on water

Japanese invent car that runs on water

Friday, June 13: Tired of petrol prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally friendly, car that it says runs solely on water.
Genepax unveiled the car in the western city of Osaka on Thursday, saying that a litre of any kind of water -- rain, river or sea -- was all you needed to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km.
"The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time," Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told local broadcaster TV Tokyo.
"It does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars," he added.
Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power, TV Tokyo said.
Whether the car makes it into showrooms remains to be seen. Genepax said it had just applied for a patent and is hoping to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers in the future.
Most big automakers, meanwhile, are working on fuel.

This is NOTHING new. There are numerous other people who have done the same thing. Water is made of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. The hydrogen is what they are "burning" to "fuel" the vehicle. That energy has to come from somewhere to split water into it's constiuent parts. If the hydrogen is burned in a fuel cell, the output is 100% water. Uhm if you just hook a tailpipe back into the car fuel tank and you'd have the impossible... Perpetual Motion Machine.

Search on Youtube for WaterCar, I think there's someone in Florida who has done the same thing. Also Brown's Gas, MagneGas, HHO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTihOwQGID0

more elaborate descriptions of "water power" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOChDVoLgFw
(this has footage from the BBC Program "Horizon" which had a 45minute program all about water power/fuel)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...q=water+power&ei=zk5eSIqiI4ym4QKVncXwCg&hl=en

 

[B_dumbcow]

As far as I know, this has been talked about between scientists for years.

Cars run on hydrogen. Water contains hydrogen.
Petrol and deisel are commonly used because they are hydrocarbons (contain hydrogen and carbon) and the hydrogen can be easily serparated. It's taken a while to find an easy and effective way to cheaply separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water...

Using water to run cars is not a hoax

Anyway, that's what I think is the sciency bit behind it. Bear in mind I haven't done chemistry since I was 16, so I'm probably wrong.

 

[1BiGG1]

Water-Fueled Car Too Good To Be True? - Green on The Huffington Post

Water-Powered Cars
Like clockwork, every time oil prices shoot up journalists scramble for stories about energy, and a few water-powered cars and perpetual motion machines always make it through. That's what happened with the Genepax Water-Powered Car featured on Reuters (and then a bit too uncritically on TreeHugger, but also on many other green sites like Environmental Leader, Celcias, etc).

How this Water Car Probably Works

One thing that helps fuel the conspiracy rumors surrounding water cars is that the media run these segments where they show "water cars" actually driving around, and it all seems to work, and then we never hear about them again. People figure that Big Oil (or the Illuminati, whatever) is suppressing the technology. The reality is more mundane: It is actually possible to make a car look like it runs on water without breaking the first law of thermodynamics. The way it's usually done is with metal hydrides. These react with water to produce hydrogen, which is then used to power the car. But since these hydrides will deplete with time, they need to be replaced and so they are actually the fuel, not the water. And you can be sure that more energy will go into producing them than will be taken out, making them an energy carrier, just like a battery.

Water Cars Create False Hopes and Real Apathy

There is a real danger in widely reporting these stories without debunking them, or at least being cautious to say that the "water car" is probably not doing what it claims it does until rigorous proof of the contrary.

The danger is that it creates false hopes, which then turn into real apathy. Either people believe that there's a solution to all our energy problems "coming real soon now", and so there's no need to worry and make efforts. And the people who've been around longer end up disillusioned and frustrated because they've been promised "water cars" for decades and it never comes, so they think that there's a big worldwide conspiracy against it (and somehow none of the dozens of "inventors" and "engineers" who worked on these projects were able to put the technical information on the internet).

The Bottom Line on Water Cars

As Carl Sagan used to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The next time you hear about a water car, remember that and don't get your hopes up too quickly.

 

[DC_DEEP]

Some type of energy or chemical reaction would be required to convert the water into hydrogen so that it could be used for fuel.

True, and

Unfortunately, separating water into hydrogen and oxygen requires energy. Whatever material they are using to break down the water in the chemical reaction is expending energy. When that material runs out of energy, it won't break the water into hydrogen and oxygen anymore. Sorry, there's no free lunch.

True.

It's simple thermodynamics. Assuming negligible losses to the system, the energy that you extract from the hydrogen-to-water process is equal to the energy you must add to the system to convert the water to hydrogen and oxygen.

In other words, every watt of power the fuel cell generates requires one watt of power to convert the fuel.

It's the same with the hydrogen fuel cell cars that were in the news last week. Every 100 horsepower produced by the fuel cell requires 100 horsepower of energy at the processing plant.

The only difference between the two is, the "water-powered" car would require that energy input to be self-contained, and the hydrogen powered car would use hydrogen tanks produced with that energy at a remote location.