The Water Powered Car – a green dream? UPDATED

We don’t get this story much in the UK, but in the US, they love it! Basically, there are garage engineers who are using an old process called electrolysis to turn water into hydrogen and oxgen gas, which is then burnt in a normal car engine – instead of petrol. The alternative is to add the hydrogen and oxygen to the normal petrol as a way of making the petrol last longer.

The kits are even all over eBay, the most popular kit being water 4 gas. The claims are quite remarkable, with increases in mpg running up to 50%. The questions are already running through your head! How does it work? Does it actually work? Why is this being done by small garage engineers and not the like of Ford or BMW? What does it cost? Is it just a scam? How can I get on the band wagon?

Lots of questions, but not that many answers.

Firstly, its not a scam, but that doesn’t mean the prices being asked for kits are not too high! None of these engineers are willing to offer warranties for long term damage to your car. So how does it work? There are some great explainations here, however, the whole story starts with these plans.

The downsides are mainly to do with rust damage inside the engine. There is also the issue of having to maintain it yourself, because no one else will want to!

So, why are the big boys not involved if it works and makes the car cheaper to run? Well, there is a letter here from BMW who tested a similar system in the 1980’s. Their issue was based on the complexity of maintainence. Although engineers fiddle with their cars, the general public don’t want to lose their cars to services, when they have got used to reliability and annual services.

So, how do you get on board? The clever money would spend time developing the idea and making it easy to sell. Easy to fit with a return which was assured and easily measurable would make it public friendly. Every technology has a time between building a concept, and someone introducing the public to the idea. Even 3 years after the Wright brothers flew a plane, there were people who didn’t think man was able to fly!

The point is, if you would like to be a part of the ‘water powered car’ business, there is nothing stopping you. If it catches on, you will be kicking yourself!

UPDATE:

Since first publishing this story, we have found some interesting documents which pour cold water on the whole plan!

This link points to a serious look at the technology. There is also a free plan here, which has a very detailed look at the output of such equipment. The bad news is that most of yesterdays post was rubbish! The eBay kits in paticular are actually dangerous and shouldn t be touched by anyone!

In the short term, this technology has potential, but is not ready for the mainstream public. In the long term, this could well be the start of the end of our use of oil as a fuel. However, history shows us that it usually takes 30 years for concepts to become available on the high street. Still want to jump on the bandwagon?

Originally posted 2008-01-30 17:04:56.