A week ago I posted on
Electric vs Hydrogen Vehicles. Today, someone sent me a video of a Japanese company called Genepax which is marketing cars that run ONLY on water.
Let's see now:
- They say it runs on hydrogen from water.
- So only water needs to be added.
- Great, for you now don't have the hydrogen storage problem.
- Plus, water is much cheaper than hydrogen.
- There is a magic box into which you pour the water, and a chemical reaction generates hydrogen.
Could this possibly be true? Well, nearly a decade ago I posted on
CAN YOU RUN A CAR ON WATER? Reported is the Renaissance Project (
because we were having lunch at a the Renaissance Hotel in Seoul, Korea) to develop a car that runs on water:
My association with water and transport is an interesting story. It was in the mid-1990's when I was having lunch with Kiryun Choi (with me to the right, professor at Ajou University) and Ki Hyung Kim (above left, first Minister of Science and Technology for South Korea) at the Renaissance Hotel in Seoul, when Dr. Kim remarked: "Wouldn't it be nice if my driver could just pour some water from my lawn hose into the tank to serve as the fuel?"
That simple question led to the Renaissance Project, which later that year, after a special planning meeting held in Reno chaired by Alan Lloyd (left), who replaced me as chairman of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel. The eminent (Paul MacCready, Bob Rose, Roberta Nichols, Pandit Patil plus another 25 participants) conferees developed a contest for students to design "something" which could convert water into a fuel to power a car. Dr. Kim, Dr. Lloyd and I presented a paper at the World Car Conference in Riverside, California in 1997 entitled "The Renaissance Project for the Next Millennium." You can go to Chapter 3 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth to read the details. The bottom line was that it turned out that hydrogen from a 15 tank gallon tank of water, with electrolysis, and using a fuel cell, could take that car 500 miles. The technology that showed the best hope for providing the energy was cold fusion. I would not be surprised if some time during the century this actually happens.
So back to Genepax and their Water Energy System, which has a membrane electrode assembly capable of breaking down H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. I thought their concept contradicted the First Law of Thermodynamics, but here is a simpler explanation from
Treehugger:
- They guess that some type of metal hydride reacts with water to produce hydrogen to power the car.
- But hydrides deplete with time, and they need to be replaced.
- Thus, the hydride is the "fuel," and not water.
- Hydrides are very expensive, and it is very costly to try to recyle them.
- Thus, more energy will need to go into the process than you get out of moving the car.
- They say that the danger to this kind of reportage is that creates false hopes.
- In 2014 Genepax claimed they invented a revolutionary system that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then uses a fuel cell to recombine it and generate electricity.
- Well, the company closed its gates, and this was all a hoax.
- Yet, they said Genepax is down...and that's sad to hear.
I searched further, and way back in 2008,
Popular Mechanics looked into Genepax and said:
Rubbish! There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
I see this on my desktop, and the posting today has been about cars, so I end in Singapore and the most expensive vending machine in the world, selling Bentleys, Ferraris and Lamorghinis. Unlike Genepax,
Autobahn Motors is real.
I should mention that there is an automobile vending machine company,
Carvana, in 24 U.S. cities. Their cars only cost from $7000 to $100,000.
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