Water powered car?

Question

Why can't we invent the car that runs on water? H2O contains the explosive element hydrogen and so is pure oxygen. Of course it is harder then I just worded it, but what is holding us back from the first water powered car?

Answer 1

The law of conservation of energy. It takes an enormous amount of energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, far more than you'd get from using either or both as fuel.

Answer 2

To seperate H from H2O you need to introduce a lot of electricity.  The energy needed to crack the chemical bonds is more than the amount of energy you'll get back out of the hydrogen when you burn it for fuel.  Hydrogen fuel cells work backwards, by combining H and O and extracting alot of electricity with which to power an electric motor.  Much more efficient, and the only byproduct is pure water!  The fuel cell is also a proven design, having been used on spacecraft as far back as the 60's.

Answer 3

the government secretly won't allow us to because they get money from oil companies.

Answer 4

water has no chemicals in it

Answer 5

Yes, cold fusion would be nice

tell you what, you figure it out then call me

Answer 6

yeah, almost impossible at the moment

Answer 7

They have been made dude, there just to expensive to mass produce at the moment

Answer 8

I have seen this work in Physics class in High school.

Mind you, if people were to drive water powered cars then everyone would be riding around in miniature hydrogen bombs. = D

Although, people thought it was daft to ride in a gasoline powered car at one time, but like the other's have said. Oil companies and the government say no.

Answer 9

Water is already oxidised and won't burn (give off energy by breaking bonds and forming molecules with oxygen). It's also in a very stable state with all outer shells of the atoms filled up with electrons meaning the "ignition" energy required is very large.

Answer 10

Not so far...We also can not make a Town in the space. so far...

Hydrogen is another matter, already a fact,but still to be improved.

Anyway...The idea about goverments around the World whiches do not allow and tatata, just bullshit.

Simply We do not have the tec. level.

Now more electric/biodiesel engines, also with solar pannels on the roof and  much lighter items to make the car...it is a fact to drive 1000 km with 3 litres of biodiesel together with electric engine,solar and sinergy etc...in the future We will see...

Bye good day.

Answer 11

easy to say hard to do!

Answer 12

It wouldnt run on water, it would run on Hydrogen.

We would use the process of electrolysis of water to get the hydrogen. This would be done at home/at a aprocessing plant so the car wouldnt run on water as I sad.

Many concept cars have been made that run on hydrogen, with the only output of the car being water.

The main reason we dont use them is, as you said, its highly explosive. Until we can find a safe way to store it in the cars we simply cant have it driving around.

If there was a car crash involving 2 hydrogen powered cars it would pretty much level the surrounding buildings.

I mean the Hindenburg ("Oh the humanity") was powered by hydrogen!

In my opinion hydrogen cars are just few years away now though.

Answer 13

To exploit the hydrogen and oxygen in H2O, you have to separate them.  This can be done through the process of electrolysis, which involves the use of electric current to separate the water into the two gasses.  The two gasses can then be used for any other purpose you like, including combustion in an engine.  The problem is, it takes more energy to separate the gasses than you can get back out of them by burning them.  So, that is a no-go.

Answer 14

Actually you can buy some conversions kits to run your car with water. It an hybrid between an electric car and a hydrogen generator/burner engine.

Just search on Google "run your can on water" and you'll be amazed about the amount of info.

Hydrogen propelled cars have not been as successful as gas fueled car just because billions of person already own gas fueled engines, and it would be too expensive to change them all at one. But it will happen with the time

Answer 15

Good point and idea, but in politics don't sells, they get little interest especially among republican, they priority is helping their special interest group (Oil Companies) instead of invest money to alternate energy, they wanna do like a tax cut to the Oil Company and request more oil drilling,  for them business comes first before the environment, nation like Japan which lack oil, their government is more support of such plan, in fact they just invented water power boat and car.

Answer 16

we can  i think chevy made one if not im 100% sure we can because wen i was in high school we had a little car that ran strickly on water and i ran well to

Answer 17

It just is not possible.

Because the H2 is already combined with the O2 and at a low energy state. And to separate the two takes more energy than you could get by combining them.

No, the only possibility is low cost electric power, from nuclear power, or  something new, like fusion power, that can separate the H2O into H2 and O2 that can be distributed to power the autos.

Answer 18

THEY're inventing it! they're testing it. it's funny u hadn't heard this in the news.

Answer 19

water powered cars have been around for a long long time.... if you accept that steam power is a form of water power. theres actually someone right now planning on trying to break the steam powered land speed record.

steam power dates back to the earliest days of the car... early cars were steam powered untill the invention of the internal combustion engine whic proved to be more reliable, easier to use and generated more power and gave greater range than steam ever could

hydrigen may well be the fuel of the future for transport.. but you couldnt' crack water into hyrdrogen and oxygen in a car t requires to much power. ironically it may well be that the vast array of wind turbiunes that the governemnt is so keen oin may well have a future as hydrogen generators.. soemhtign they may wel excell in especially as they are so poor at generating electricity

Answer 20

there was a hydrogen powered car

Answer 21

Because---we have less water than we think we do. And salt water is hard to work with, there would be so much evaportation, it would be humid and rain all the time.

We should find a way to make our energy with something we have a surplus of, like garbage, sureley the decompostion could generate some energy.

Answer 22

The cost of liberating those chemicals is 2 to 3 times higher than the yield.

Answer 23

Blame the government, there's a conspiracy involed, I promise.

Answer 24

There are many possibilities why, Its to much money more resources are needed and if its safe to make one for production.

Answer 25

We do have that.  It's called a canoe.

Answer 26

Getting the water pure enough and changing it into a burnable form takes more energy than it gives off.

To be green the electricity at least would have to come from solar/wind etc. But still cost prohibitive.

Answer 27

It called fuel cell design

According to what i know, the process to split H2O to H2 and O2 is not enviromental friendly.