5 Responses

1. because to date there has been no filling stations that enable you to fill up with hydrogen apart from in some parts of Los Angeles.

2. Simple answer? Because the US Patent Office doesn’t like them.

   Somewhat longer answer: A while back, the US Patent Office got absolutely flooded with “free energy” patents that simply did not and could not work. People were also filing speculative patents, for things that were pure science fiction at the time, in hopes of cashing in on the advances they expected any day now, preemptively stealing from the inventors. There were so many of both, that there was a rules change made in how the Patent Office handled free energy patents. Where before, the Patent Office had to test and verify free energy claims, the rules were changed to include a statement that free energy was impossible, and patent applications based on it should simply be tossed in the garbage, essentially unread.

   Cars that run on water were one of the things listed specifically in the rules change. Now that technology can actually build the things (and has been able to for the past 15-20 years) several people a year try to patent such a process, and their patent applications are universally rejected by the Patent Office, unread.

   Since it’s just about impossible to get any investors in a start-up company if you lack patents on what you plan to manufacture, and the big car companies (that could produce such a car without having to seek investors first) have a long-standing and solid alliance with the oil companies, nobody builds the things.

   Oh, and as a last note to those who will inevitably mention the Hindenburg crash: Know how many people died or were injured in the crash, and what sorts of injuries they suffered? Every single person who died, died of massive blunt force trauma. They panicked, ignored the zeppelin crew in their panic, and jumped to their deaths from hundreds of feet in the air. Among the people who obeyed the safety instructions and the cabin crew’s orders, the worst injury was a mild case of smoke inhalation, and that guy was a member of the crew. None of the passengers who obeyed the crew were injured or killed. None.

   Flying on a modern jet airliner is many times safer than driving a car to reach your destination; But if you compare number of air vehicles to number of flights to number of crashes, even a hydrogen-filled zeppelin is dozens of times safer than any jet. Helium is far more commonly available now than in the days of the Hindenburg, and helium doesn’t burn like hydrogen does, making modern zeppelins safer still. In the event of a crash, more people will survive even the worst kind of zeppelin crash than a jet crash, since a zeppelin won’t hit the ground at 400-500 miles per hour.

3. the car companies don’t want to lose money by redesigning cars. there are also hardly any hydrogen fuel stations around.

4. Where is all that water going to come from to power these cars? Only so much to go around. Personally I’d rather drink it to stay alive than dump in the tank of my car. There are are better choices for fueling cars.

5. Actually the only place that has hydrogen cars is in the US where there are approximately 200 Honda FCX clarity’s on the road. These vehicles use fuel cells and are only leased at a loss as prototypes to gather some real world data, because the technology remains too expensive to market. You will only see them in California. (except for one recently taken to the UK for journalists to try and then write reviews about it.

   You seem to know all about these vehicles that “run on water,” and you are not about to “take a lot of crap,” but there are articles that comment on several aspects of several energy from water projects.

   1. Water is a very stable chemical combination. Pure hydrogen is not. Hydrogen wants to combine with other substances so readily that there is no free hydrogen on Earth.

   2. Pure hydrogen is at a higher potential energy level than water otherwise it would not give up energy when combining with oxygen to become water. It requires energy to raise hydrogen from the lower level of its combination with oxygen to the higher level of being in an uncombined state.

   3. Vehicles in “run on hydrogen” demonstrations typically are “prepared.” And then they are run for a short demonstration and then the demonstration is over. As the entire period is longer than the active “demonstration” period it is entirely reasonable that a hydrolysis unit is started, produces hydrogen that is build up within the system and continues to operate for the duration of the active demonstration. In this case the vehicle is not running on energy produced only during the active demonstration phase but on energy that has build up prior to the demonstration. If such a vehicle were to continue to operate it may exceed its production capacity. This may contribute to the reason why we don’t see demonstrations that remove all batteries from the system or that go for distance records.

   4. A catalyst is used to lower energy requirements for electrolysis. If a catalyst requires less energy for its production than it saves we have an energy positive relationship. This is not always the case.

   The Reuters article about the Japanese car (Genepax)1 has all but been retracted and refuted by Reuters here: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=85239&videoChannel=1 and Genepax has since closed down: http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2009/02/24/genepax-japanese-water-car-company-shut-to-silence/

   So lets put all the so called science aside for the moment and take a look at the Rhetoric. You have big companies and scientists slamming innovators and almost screaming that it “WON’T WORK.” Regardless of their arguments the emotional baggage is enough to set your “teeth on edge.” You might begin to suspect that somehow science is being set up for a radical reassessment. It may be true. I am open, even eager, for counter arguments that suggest how such technology might work but so far I haven’t seen any.