TerraPass blog
Does the “water-powered car” really work?
Adam Stein
Yes, but the water has to come from unicorn tears.
by Adam Stein – July 8, 2008
Unsurprisingly, inevitably, rising gas prices have brought increased interest in the water-powered car. Is there really a simple technology that can dramatically boost the efficiency of conventional cars or, better yet, allow you to run your car entirely on tap water?
No. No, there is not.
I don’t want to belabor this topic,1 and as it happens, the available information about various water-powered car schemes is scant enough that they’re generally hard to debunk fully. A couple of points do bear mentioning, though:
* Water is not a fuel.2 And not just because we aren’t clever enough to turn it into one. Water simply doesn’t carry chemical energy in the way that gasoline does. Consider: when you touch a match to water, it fails to explode. You can drink all the water you want without gaining weight.3 This isn’t a technology issue, it’s just a fundamental property of water.4
* Some of the so-called “water-powered” cars are simply cheating: they use another fuel that releases energy upon contact with water. Or they use a charged battery as an energy input. It is accurate to say that such cars do not run on gasoline. It is inaccurate to say that such cars are “powered” by water. Invariably, whatever it is they are really running on is expensive and/or hard to come by. (If you’re interested in learning more about the role that water can play in the energy cycle, check out our toy fuel cell cars.)
* The water-powered car kits commonly advertised on the internet claim to use water to boost the efficiency of a conventional gasoline engine. This isn’t an inherently crackpot notion, and in fact a quick search turns up some non-crazy people who have done research suggesting that electrolyzed water can improve the performance of internal combustion engines. The problem is that the web sites selling the car kits generally are completely crackpot, offering up a stew of conspiracy theory, outlandish claims, and typographical errors that fairly screams scam.
Even if you’re not hep to the science — and frankly, I’m not sure it’s even possible to untangle the technical claims being made on these web sites — a little common sense does go a long way. Some questions to ponder the next time some asks for your credit card number:
* Does it sound too good to be true? Put another way, why isn’t everyone in the world doing it already? Why doesn’t the military run its Humvees on “HHO gas”? Why hasn’t Detroit blown away those pesky CAFE standards with a water-powered SUV?
* Is there an elaborate conspiracy theory involved? Of course there is! The reason that water-powered cars haven’t taken over our roadways is that the inventor, Stan Meyer, was killed by winged monkeys in 1998.5 Although authorities refused to pursue an investigation, security camera footage revealed a shirtless Dick Cheney fleeing the scene. Here’s the thing, though: except in bad movies, you can’t derail a technology by killing its inventor, particularly a technology that is described in great detail on the world wide web.
* Do the claims involve pseudoscientific jargon? Like HHO gas, perhaps?
* Are there any credible companies or research organizations touting the technology? When Google funds a company building water-powered cars, perhaps we can start to get excited about the prospect of filling up at the tap.
Footnotes
1. But inevitably I will.
2. I’m setting aside any consideration of nuclear fusion, for the simple reason that such technology doesn’t presently exist. Maybe in a hundred years or so I’ll have to update this post.
3. Well, you’ll gain water weight, at least until your kidneys are able to catch up with your mouth.
4. Consider that water is actually a waste product from the burning of other types of fuels. Claiming to run a car on water is a bit like claiming to have invented a car that can run on dead batteries. It just doesn’t make sense.
5. Actually, Stan died in 1998 of an aneurysm, only a few years after being convicted of “gross and egregious fraud” for making false claims about…water-powered cars.
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