Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan

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


Jun. 13 - Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water.
The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it.
SOUNDBITE: Kiyoshi Hirasawa, CEO, Genepax.
Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri reports.

I can see water taxes raising up to 4$ per gallon in states very soon :)

Hahaha

Very cool, I'll have to keep my eye out for that car. Was happy to hear that it was invented here in Osaka. I wonder how much it will cost, probably a lot since on the same Reuters website they had another video of a $6,000 watermelon.
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?vi...videoChannel=4

I thought all the $300 watermelons at the dept. stores were expensive, you could get a used car instead of a watermelon.

I spent a lot of time typing up a lot of stuff about how engines work, how hydrogen is produced and how it is used.. but fuck it.

I don't want to say all that stuff, when all I need to say is that this is bullshit.

What it porports to do is extract electrons "from thin air" (in this case from hydrogen atoms, same thing) and convert them directly into an electric current that can be used to for power.

If you could do that, then you wouldn't need any system to generate hydrogen. You'd also solve the worlds energy usage forever since there is an unlimited amount of electrons continually "floating around" us all the time, it's commonly refered to as light.

Ok, so I looked into it and it turns out that this has some slight plausability and that article was just written by stupid people that don't understand science.

So the way that this thing is supposed to work is that the car would have a battery that powers an electic system which converts water into pure hydrogen. It doesn't mention what happens to the oxygen or how it isolates the componants. this is the real sketchy part because no details are privided for how this part works. right now such a process does exists, on a much larger scale, because water yeilds so little hydrogen and it requires more energy to extract then can be generated from it. so it's not efficient and is rarely used other than as experiment.

But anyway, assuming that works somehow, the hydrogen would then be used to power a fuel cell which charges a second battery, and that battery provides the power source for the cars electric engine.

So it takes a bunch of idea that technically work, but don't really make much sense together.

here is a better critique that i found.

"On June 14, 2008, New Energy Congress member, Richard P. George, Ph.D. wrote:

Even if this works (I'm somewhat skeptical short of more proof), the product is not economic at either their current manufacturing cost ($18,522 for 300 Wp or $61.74 per Wp) or their target rate ($5,000 for 300 Wp or $16.67 per Wp). The use of water for fuel is just a curiosity because the cost is greater than that of traditional fuel cells AND their fuel costs.

I would also want to know about their stack life. Stack life is a huge problem for all fuel cells - many of which have lives measured in hours (typically 6 months to 4 years of continuous operation. For this product to achieve grid parity, it would need a 20 year stack life at 9.5 cents per KWH grid prices or 10 years at 19 cents per KWH."