Why water powered cars will never exist

[Diddlez]

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1769/68 - from digg

It's a pretty short but good read, so all of you lazy illiterate fucks shouldn't have a problem. For anyone who has ever taken a physics class this is pretty basic common sense, but a lot of people still cant get it through their heads that it is impossible.

[DarkSpoon]

well, not impossible just impractical. i mean he says how it works and people have separated the hydrogen from water for a long time. it just takes so much energy to do that it's pretty usls as of now.

[Saman]

people are working on ways to hasten the process though.
IE, some guys at MIT? are trying to us biotech to make algae to break down power.

and its not a case of input/output energy. maybe you will have to put more energy in to liberate the hydrogen than the hydrogen will give off when you burn it. However the types of energy you get at the end are really what matter. Like you can use a waterfall(not a very mobile source of energy ) to spin generators to electrolyze water and get hydrogen(which is an extremely mobile source of energy) that you can put in cars.

[Acromus]

I didn't read the text clearly. But they are talking about a perpetual mobile that runs with water .. aren't they.

But basically a car can run with water .. It's just that atm it takes too much energy to usefully use it ...

[DarkSpoon]

yeah, that's correct acro. the title of the thread is wrong. water powered cars are possible. perpetual motion machines are not.

[Diddlez]

No, I didn't title anything wrong.

The car is not powered by water. The car is powered by whatever you used to start the electrolysis process to break the water up into hydrogen. And this will never work (efficiently) also because it uses much more energy in the electrolysis process than can be used to power the car. This is a net energy loss. So whatever source you use for the electrolysis process is actually what is powering the car, and not water, and not the hydrogen.

This is all basic thermodynamics so I really cannot understand why morons think this will ever work (efficiently).

In conclusion I did not title the thread incorrectly, and water powered cars will never exist until the day perpetual motion machines exist (greater than 100% efficiency).

[DarkSpoon]

the water engine could work like a gasoline engine. a battery used for getting the engine started and then an alternator to keep charging the battery which would be used for the electrolysis. no it wouldn't be efficient but we don't have an engine that is. i wouldn't say it was impossible.

[Saman]

i should have read the article first .

HOWEVER...

watercould be used to power your car if that water happens to be "heavy water" and your car has a nuclear fission generator inside of it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDAZsPkTkMM
gg, i am still correct. gg

[Diddlez]

the water engine could work like a gasoline engine. a battery used for getting the engine started and then an alternator to keep charging the battery which would be used for the electrolysis. no it wouldn't be efficient but we don't have an engine that is. i wouldn't say it was impossible.

This all makes sense, but you get far less energy out of this than you put into it. You may as well just take water out of the equation altogether and call it an electric car. It would take more electricity to start the electrolysis than you would get usable energy out of it in hydrogen, hence the net energy loss.

Also another reason why water powered cars will not exist is because the car isn't even "powered" by water, its "powered" by hydrogen, and until hydrogen is discovered in a usable state on this planet without breaking down water to get it, or using hydrocarbons to produce it, hydrogen powered cars will not ever be usefull.

There is a reason no one has made a working concept of a "water powered car" or a "hydrogen powered car", and there is a reason why these idiots who say it can be done havent actually done it.

[Spyder]

It seems retarded to use water anyways...this kind of product would not be translated to many other countries because lots of countries (and even many parts of our own country) struggle with droughts. I think JUST the idea of using water would not go over well - whether or not water powered cars would significantly impact the water supply or not.

Electric cars are still the most viable option ATM, IMO - but I'm open to thoughts on that as well.