Japanese roll out water powered car

Nothing much more than the text conveyed. They said it can run for an hour at 80 Km/hr on a litre of water. Nothing about how the 'magic' generator removes the hydrogen from the water though.

 

Nothing about emissions. It just says it removes hydrogen from the water producing electrons. Sounds too good to be true for me.

 

How much energy goes into producing metal hydrides then?

 

Sensationalist journalism again I fear.

 

Yes. I find reports like that a shameful gimmick: "a car that runs on nothing but water" is false. It perpetuates the myth that water can actually generate energy when the energy comes from another source that is not mentioned. The translator says "no external input is needed" probably just to mean "no power cord dragging behind the vehicle". Reuters? Sheesh.

 

Not to mention having something as caustic as sodium hydroxide as the exhausted product. I guess if you have a container to collect it into, you'll never need to buy drain cleaner again.

I'd hate to see what happens when the NaOH dripped onto the roads comes into contact with acid rain. :uhh: Might not have to worry about ice on the roads in winter though.

 

They claim "no emmissions". Not even that water or hydrogen or oxygen is emmitted. From this I can only assume that they have found a way to convert the entire rest mass of the water into electrical energy.

 

:rofl: In that case, I'd really prefer it if they worked on finding something that produced sodium bicarbonate as a waste product. Then at least if I get indigestion over the rising fuel costs, sucking on a tailpipe would be a less lethal solution to that problem. :uhh:

 

I know very little about chemical things, but looking at the blue box on the desk, there are 8 maybe 9 cap nuts that suggest more than a casual pressure. An electrical generated plasma, and the fact that water and air can be taken to extremes, hot and cold, to me suggest things in the micro scale and nano speeds. I can't explain what i think so I'll just leave it at that.

 

Regardless of the article being sensational, if the company says that the car can run at 80kmph for an hour using a liter of water, isn't that good enough? I would say that if the claims are accurate, then this is an effective solution to the oil problem if it can be implemented on a large scale, and the waste products should not be very harmful to the environment, or at the very least, should be managable.

I know you cant really say that without knowing what process they use to derive energy from water, but the engineers who designed and worked on that car must have put a lot of thought into that too. You cant really disregard professional sensibilities can you?

 

Good enough for what? I mean, first we need to show that it can do it, then figure out if it does it the way the company claims.

I'd be satisfied with even a 40 mile trip per day. I don't even drive that much on a typical day, and even if I had to buy 2 bottles of Aquafina or whatever to fill it up, I'd be happy.

 

If it's a hoax, it should be easy to debunk.

Send in the Myth Busters. :)

 

Russ, I would like to ask a question, based on a statement of an experience in my past.
The incidence was a need to start a diesel engine, due to a poor connection ?? at the battery terminal, the load imposed by the starter resulted in the lead post being completely vaporised, and melted, in some portion of one second.

Now the question is, if a single drop of water (about 1/25 ml) or at least a very small amount of liquid, is moved into a small and very hot chamber and brought into a state of superheated vapor, would any of that vapor produce a combustion if air is someway brought into the mix ?
To me it seems possible that some part of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, might produce energy in excess of what it takes to put the water into superheated conditions.

Any energy system takes a larger amount of energy to put into motion, but to sustain that motion takes far less than the input, somewhere in between starting and stopping there should be some wiggle room.