Using Water as Fuel – Environmentally Sound?
February 16, 2008 by Spotlight-on WM
Filed under ENVIRO, Hybrid Cars
I’ve been running across a lot of articles and ads lately about being able to “hybridize” and fuel a regular car, truck, SUV with water, talking about how cheap it is to convert a car to use both gas and water – especially compared to the current prices on gasoline – but the one thing that I notice they don’t mention is that “fresh” water is in just about as short supply as oil is expected to become.
While the emissions of a car hybridized to run on ‘water’ and gas are supposed to be up to 40% lower than a gas-only vehicle, there still are emissions and they aren’t “pure water” (like hydrogen-only vehicles leave behind.) That means that even though you’d be getting up to twice the “gas mileage” using the changes to your existing vehicle, you’d also be using up valuable drinking water to do it. And with the world seeming to be heading towards drought conditions in many, many areas, water may become even more valuable than oil. (After all, you can’t drink oil very well, eh?)
It seems to me that while converting a vehicle to run on water seems like a great idea for people with even a little working knowledge of mechanics (it’s only an add-on, not a totally overhaul), I don’t think I’d want it to become widespread until we find a better, more cost effective way to convert sea water into fresh water so we can have our fuel-water and drink it, too. Although, at that point, totally hydrogen “clean” vehicles may finally become more available and convenient or some other form of electric car made workable, making this upgrade technology completely obsolete.
