Water-powered car great for Myrtle Beach, not for us
June 25, 2008 at 9:28 am by Thomas Wheatley in NewsFirst it was Kudzu, then it was Shonen Knife. Now this.
The newest gift from Japan is a car that runs on water. Freshwater, saltwater, rain — it doesn’t matter. One liter of the liquid, researchers say, is enough to power the little mobile for 50 miles in an hour.
Sadly, this doesn’t help us. At least not metro Atlanta. There’s another problem:
“The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time,” Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told local broadcaster TV Tokyo.
This might work in fueling rental scooters in Panama City Beach, Fla., but inland, the Mayorz hate the bottlez. Add to the fact that amping up production of bottled water to fuel entire fleets of cars would probably offset any environmental gains made if we eased off gasoline. (It takes 17 million barrels of oil every year to manufacture plastic bottles, most of which end up in landfills.)
Please continue with the innovation, Japan. Send us a car that runs on broken promises and Atlanta will be set!
(Toboggan tip to Crooks and Liars, who has a video of the invention.)
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June 25th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Seriously, your problem with this is that they would use bottles? This is clearly a hoax, they are essentially claiming to have built a perpetual motion machine. It `breaks down’ water, supposedly to hydrogen and uses that to power some sort of fuel cell. Which is guaranteed to produce less energy than was used to `break down’ the water. I’m dumbfounded that Reuters would let this through.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Jonathan,
A hoax? How dare you doubt our friends from the Land of the Rising Sun?!?!
I was playing with the idea that often times these miracle inventions we think will solve all our problems may bring about a whole other host of problems.
Courtesy of Joeventures (www.joeventures.com), here’s a guy stateside who says his invention could power a car with saltwater.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo