Have you seen the show Future Cars?

Question

What did you think about the car that runs on WATER?

Or the car that runs on AIR?

Answer 1

First of all, these are not "water-powered" cars... hear that all the time, *sigh*: They are hydrogen powered where the exhaust is water and the hydrogen comes from water...

Hydrogen, produced by the electrolysis of water can be recombined with oxygen from the air releasing energy at the same time - i.e. hydrogen is "burnt" to release energy in the same way as petrol is.

Main difference is the by-product is water rather than CO, CO2 and a bunch of nasty hydrocarbons.

The trick is that hydrogen is not so simple to store and move around as petrol: It's very flammable and takes up a lot of space as a gas, is very difficult to liquify (very cold/lots of pressure). However there are ways of storing it safely, mainly in "fuel cells".

BUT - and it's a big but - where did the energy to electrolyse the water come from in the first place? If solar power, great - this is green. If it comes from plugging into the main electricity grid that is powered by coal or oil power stations, then we haven't really saved anything!

(Well, it moves the pollution from the roads to wherever the power station is and does give the possibility of cleaning the 'exhaust' of the power station which is not as easy to do to every car. But we're not cleaning the exhaust, so: no benefit so far!)

Edit:

There's also the claim that WES systems can run on water, but there are some concerns about the claim - see my response in http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...

Answer 2

There is a recent inventor from Australia that can power cars from water as a medium. I think the technology they call is Joe Cell

Answer 3

yup