Water-fueled cars; are they real?
Picture: Pixabay via Pexels.com
Over the past decade or so, there has been an ever-growing interest in alternative fuels for automobiles. This interest is no doubt a part of the overall concern about climate change and the growing preference for renewable energies sweeping the globe. Cars and the transportation industry as a whole are a massive part of this concern given that automobiles produce a significant amount of carbon emissions, plus the fact that the number of cars on the road only seems to increase yearly.
Existing Alternatives
Replacing combustion engines which rely on fossil fuels isn't going to be easy. Even now there are plenty of alternative fuels out there, ranging from biodiesel and hydrogen, but these options are challenging to scale up to a point where drivers can switch over away from petrol or diesel easily and affordably.
Even popular alternatives like electric cars have significant limitations. Other than the high cost of the electric vehicles themselves and the high cost of electricity to charge them, it can also be challenging to build enough charging stations all over Malaysia. It's one thing to develop the technology and sell it to users, it's a whole other challenge to build the infrastructure necessary to support their use.
Believe it or not, one such alternative that has been proposed over the years is water! That's right, there have been multiple cases where H20 was claimed to function as fuel to power an actual car! Unfortunately, these claims are eventually debunked as scams designed to cheat investors of their money or even conspiracy theories based on false science. However, in the quest for sustainable fuels to power vehicles and safeguard our planet, even remote possibilities like this one are worth examining.
How would it work?
Water (or H20) is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. This chemical formula forms the basis by which all these claims are built. Through a process called 'electrolysis', it's often claimed that it's possible to separate the chemical elements of water into hydrogen and oxygen, before recombining them to generate power.
The power supposedly generated by this process is then used to fuel the car, either through the existing combustion engine or some other kind of device like a fuel cell which powers the vehicle with electricity.
One well-known claim of such technology is the 'Garrett Electrolytic Carburetor'. Back in 1932, inventor Henry Garrett and his son C.H. Garrett were reported to have created a working carburettor that used nothing but water to power their car. The inventors claimed that to convert a vehicle that already had a gasoline engine, all they needed was an electrolytic carburettor and a generator to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. A local news outlet in the US supposedly recorded the inventors operating the water-fueled car all those many years ago, though the concept doesn't seem to have become widely used even decades later.
Since the 1960s, similar claims have been made by all kinds of people ranging from engineers, inventors, to startup companies looking for funding. Though these claims have been debunked by scientists and automotive experts alike, there are still many who believe them and were willing to invest funds into those projects.
Popular Media and Conspiracy Theories
The belief in water-fueled cars, or at least their possibility, is in part thanks to popular media. From time to time, you'll find that there are television shows, movies, and even novels that depict their own imagination of what a water-fueled car might look like. In doing so, they pique the imaginations of people who believe in such a possibility.
Additionally, there are also conspiracy theories surrounding this particular topic. Conspiracy theorists believe this technology has already existed for a very long time. However, they also believe that it has been kept hidden either by the government or by those who would lose a lot of money because of it. Companies that would lose out the most to such a technology would, of course, be the likes of oil and gas companies that produce the fuels that all drivers rely so much on today.
Whether or not this theory is true, most of us will never know. The only sure thing is that there will always be people who believe in the possibility of automobiles powered by water.
Conclusion
In the pursuit of sustainable fuels for human transportation, it's tempting to believe claims of vehicles that use cheap/free fuels and have zero carbon emissions like water-fueled cars. These solutions may very well be a reality one day, but it's essential to understand where the available technology currently stands, and how fast it could be developed. The development of these kinds of new, unseen technologies will require plenty of qualified automotive technology experts working on researching and developing them into existence in the future.
Who knows, maybe you could someday be one of those people. Imagine yourself working on new, previously-impossible automotive technologies just years after you graduate from your automotive college!