Cool video.
Just so everyone understand what's going on here: (This was a post on Digg)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Digg
Water is not the fuel--it's not the source of energy. Electricity from your local power plant is your source of power. Electrolysing water and then burning the result gets you around the simple problem that electricity itself doesn't burn. You can burn hydrocarbons, like butane or gasoline, but then you have to store the fuel (which can be dangerous).
Instead, you store water, a very stable substance. You use electricity to turn that water into fuel, then immediately burn the result, turning it back into water. You can even take that waste water and run it back through the system. You always get less power out of the system than you put into it (laws of thermodynamics in effect here); but you've effectively found a way to burn hydrogen without having to store the hydrogen and oxygen, which can be very dangerous to store.
A water-powered car isn't really powered by water. It's battery-powered. However, puting water into the system allows you to still use a combustion engine, rather than electric motors. It's not nearly as efficient, which is why this route isn't being pursued by auto makers. But there can be advantages, depending on your needs.
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Cool technology, but it's
not a potential alternative to oil - it's not supposed to be. However it
could be a useful way to allow alternative fuels to be used. For instance you could have oil replaced with nuclear power. Obviously having cars which
literally run on nuclear power is out of the question. But this way, we could have cars running on electricity, which could be from nuclear sources, rather than fossil fuels.
Of course electric cars are nothing new. But the traditional cars which run on electric motors were plagued with plenty of well known problems making them completely impractical for the vast majority of people. It would be interesting to know how these "HHO" cars compare to regular electric cars.