Driving Your Car on Water – Scam Alert!
Caveat Emptor: Watch out for businesses and products which promise to save you gas by adding some expensive liquid to your fuel tank, or, as I have recently seen, a company which sells a car engine conversion kit to allow your car to run on gas.
It seems that a large number of people believe this hype, and with gas prices increases at their current rate, maybe many of us are willing to suspend our disbelief in the hopes of finding a solution.
However, the reality is that mineral oil appears to have replaced snake oil as one of the preferred means of reducing the mass inside your wallet.
These additives, at best, have a one-time effect of cleaning parts inside the engine to allow it to run more efficiently. Nevertheless, those types of cleaners are available at your local car parts or hardware store, usually much less expensively, and do not have to be added to every tankful, as these outfits claim, because they do not do anything to the gas to make it more efficient.
For real benefits, you could buy a more fuel efficient car, or just take the proven advice offered on the following website:
Sierra Club: Filling Up For Less
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Tags: browns gas, gas alternative, HHO, hydrogen car, hydrogen engine, water engine, water for gas, water to gas
5 Comments to “Driving Your Car on Water – Scam Alert!”
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By admin, May 30, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
First, despite the headline of “run your car on water”, Water4Gas is not really offering a product that tells you how to run a car from water out your kitchen faucet. It is offering informational books on creating an on-demand hydrogen hybrid from your combustible engine, which sounds less exciting but is more realistic.
Second, the reason it’s more realistic is because, as we all know, large car manufacturers have been building hybrids like crazy as US consumers are moving towards more eco-friendly habits. So, yes, the idea of running of your car on pure water is science fiction (for now), but the idea of converting your current gas-only combustible engine into a hybrid is a reality. In fact, nowadays, it’s downright common.
Yes, we realize nobody will run their car directly off of water. The “catch” is that the car is running off of hydrogen, right?
But:
Energy added to the engine = Energy required to create the hydrogen – Losses in the process
Even if your losses were zero, which is impossible, your best case scenario is that your car is simply breaking even.
That is, the energy you took FROM YOUR CAR to create the hydrogen is at the best case THE SAME as the energy going back INTO THE CAR, but probably much less.
The water to gas scheme is a loser.
By Chemist, June 24, 2008 @ 8:19 am
Educate yourselves before you fall for the gas from water scam:
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,51072.0.html
By Techno, June 24, 2008 @ 8:27 am
Another opinion on the water powered car:
“Water Powered Cars” generally work like this: Energy stored in a battery or generated by an on-board gasoline powered generator, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The two are then recombined, either in an internal combustion engine or in a fuel cell. Energy from the fuel cell or the engine then drives the car.
So, simplifying this, they’re breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen and then burning hydrogen and oxygen to create water. This is, of course, possible, but you can’t get more energy out of the system than you put in. Otherwise, it’s simply a perpetual motion machine.
If it worked, it could sit on the driveway and make energy all day every day and power the entire world without you ever needing to put anything in it. In short, if it worked, it would break the laws of physics, and we would never need to burn another piece of coal again. This would be an extraordinarily easy thing to prove. Too bad none of these people who make these wonderful devices are too busy talking to the local news to actually build one.
By mgpc, July 8, 2009 @ 3:00 am
Water-powered car scam final word:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1769/69/
(By the way, we should stop comparing these scams to snake-oil. Snake oil contained large amounts of Omega-3 and other healthful substances which reduced inflammation, thereby relieving arthritis and other inflammation-triggered maladies. If not for swindlers selling fake snake oil, it would have the same respectability as Linseed Oil or Cod Liver Oil today.)
By mgpc, July 8, 2009 @ 3:00 am
Water-powered car scam final word:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1769/69/
(By the way, we should stop comparing these scams to snake-oil. Snake oil contained large amounts of Omega-3 and other healthful substances which reduced inflammation, thereby relieving arthritis and other inflammation-triggered maladies. If not for swindlers selling fake snake oil, it would have the same respectability as Linseed Oil or Cod Liver Oil today.)