Genepax shows off water-powered fuel cell vehicle

We've seen plenty of promises about water-powered cars (among other things), but it looks like Japan's Genepax has now made some real progress on that front, with it recently taking the wraps off its Water Energy System fuel cell prototype. The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction. Not surprisingly, the company isn't getting much more specific than that, with it only saying that it's adopted a "well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA." Currently, that system costs on the order of ¥2,000,000 (or about $18,700 -- not including the car), but company says that if it can get it into mass production that could be cut to ¥500,000 or less (or just under $5,000). Head on past the break for a video of car in action courtesy of Reuters.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[Mile @ Jun 13th 2008 1:53PM]

This would be perfect to keep in the back of my SUV for emergencies...like running out of gas or getting a flat tire.

[d @ Jun 13th 2008 2:06PM]

uh, clarification - that is a joke, right?
Sarcasm can be hard to pick up in text form :-)

[johnzilla @ Jun 13th 2008 3:37PM]

@Mile

Exactly what I was thinking! It would fit perfectly in the back of my F250 Super Duty Crew Cab with room to spare.

[Meereck @ Jun 17th 2008 1:03PM]

You've forgotten to state the make and how much you've payed for your SUV. People won't know how cool you really are. Such a friendly piece of advive for you.

[Dave @ Jun 13th 2008 1:58PM]

"suprisingly"

[Flashpoint @ Jun 13th 2008 1:58PM]

Thank god we have big oil companies, their lobbyists and our government to protect us from the DANGERS of these abominations.


Imagine not having to pay huge amounts of money for gasoline????

My goodness...everyone would be able to afford to drive then.

[BTomazic @ Jun 13th 2008 3:59PM]

Cause... you know... everyone being able to afford to drive will make things soo much better. =/

Lets see, more traffic, more idiots on the road, more idiots on the road causing traffic, more traffic causing road rage.... this one seems to be a slight toss up.

[Kelly @ Jun 13th 2008 1:59PM]

british accent makes me sick =\

[Rod @ Jun 13th 2008 2:39PM]

She does have a very bland and monotonous voice I grant you...I think that there might be a hint of Scottish in there somewhere, but there isn't British accent as such, more hundreds of them that change every 10 miles! I hate NY accents & love Californian's...horses for courses :)

[Meereck @ Oct 22nd 2008 3:23PM]

If one has nothing to say they can always blame someone's accent. That should all be in Japanese, just for you.

[yianni @ Jun 28th 2008 1:23AM]

why ?

[John @ Jun 24th 2008 7:34PM]

I'm curious what you think of as a "New York" accent. I've lived in the state in various locations for over thirty years, and everyone has a different idea of what a New York accent is. I grew up on the south shore of Long Island where we may have spoken quickly, but not really with much of an accent. Queens/Whitestone folk often drop the letter R from the ends of certain word and replaces it with an 'uh' sound (water becomes wat-uh). The Brooklyn 'accent' seems to be the most often referred to/thought of accent for New Yorkers when it comes to people who don't have a clue about the state and the fact that it's bigger than the five boroughs. This accent has been comically exagerated by Fran Drescher in her portrayal as "The Nanny." Then you have Flushing which has a very large population of Koreans. Chinatown, NY. Ebonics crops up in pockets all over the state. There are rural area upstate whose speech is similar to rural Pennsylvania, with notable differences and similarities in some vocabulary (yince, y'all, yonders etc...). There are also several Native American/Indian Nations throughout New York State. So, pray tell, which "New York accent" do you hate????

[Flashpoint @ Jun 13th 2008 2:01PM]

Electrolysis is the process by which water fueled vehicles will be possible.

Electric current seperates hydrogen from oxygen to produce possibly the CLEANEST FUEL that will ever be known to man.

Only downsie is, you need large amounts of electricity to work with. That means you need a combination of water and solar power (to keep it clean).

Nuclear Submarines use electrolysis to produce breathable air from the water surrounding them. That's a good possibility for future water reclimation projects when we leave earth and go to Mars.

[Low Ranked @ Jun 13th 2008 2:06PM]

Yes, but, where exactly does one find water to convert into oxygen on Mars?

[JD @ Jun 13th 2008 2:10PM]

Electrolysis you say? So now I can drive my car and be stubble free too!? yippee!

[Flashpoint @ Jun 13th 2008 2:27PM]

polar ice caps.

[Alex @ Jun 13th 2008 3:41PM]

DOOOOM!
I was put off future scientific advances by that game...

[watt @ Jun 13th 2008 4:31PM]

If you had a way to store that much electricity in the car why not just have an electric car, then? Something smells fishy, and it's not yesterday's sushi.

[kagai @ Jun 13th 2008 2:04PM]

SUCK IT, Big Oil!

[Jandalf @ Jun 13th 2008 2:13PM]

Water for fuel? Seriously? I'm a little hazy on the exact science of this, but I'm PRETTY SURE that fresh water is an extremely limited commodity on our planet.

I'm 100% for new technologies and green everything. But this seems like some brainy guy in the back room figured out how to make this car and some idiot in the front room said "Brilliant! Do it!"

[R0B3RT @ Jun 13th 2008 2:20PM]

Apparently you did not watch the video as it says it runs on any type of water include ocean water there Einstein.

[Jandalf @ Jun 13th 2008 4:24PM]

OK, fair enough - I have all kinds of internet blocks at work so I couldn't see the video.

Still - what do we do, truck tons of ocean water to inland areas? What do the trucks run on?

[Mojo_Yugen @ Jun 13th 2008 5:09PM]

Anykind of water? Hmmmm....I'm envisioning a tube that runs from near the drivers seat to the "gas" tank. That solves a few problems at once!

(I'm so on my way to the patent office now...)

[mcg @ Jun 13th 2008 2:15PM]

There's a big problem here: electrolysis requires energy. Where is the energy coming from to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen? They claim that the car is self-contained, that you only need to add water. They don't seem to be implying that you plug it in at night, no suggestion of solar panels on the roof, or anything of that sort.

[cduran01 @ Jun 13th 2008 4:18PM]

This system doesn't operate on electrolysis. It uses a chemical reaction to split the H from the 2 O's.

There are plenty of fuel cell systems that operate this way, one is a portable device charger that I've seen on engadget.

[M @ Jun 13th 2008 10:37PM]

[...]It uses a chemical reaction to split the H from the 2 O's.[...]

I thought it was H2O... but maybe I'm wrong

[Thomas Tipton @ Jun 21st 2008 2:07PM]

It didn't say it's using electrolysis. It's using a fuel cell type membrane, the water is reacting chemically with the catalyst in the membrane to liberate electrons from the water. (No doubt that catalyst material is The Trade Secret)

[REAL6 @ Jun 13th 2008 2:16PM]

This is very old news. It will never get passed!!!

Stan Meyers' water car invention back in the 1970s. He was killed by the way...

http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIgOn1kRw5s

[Ignatius @ Jun 13th 2008 2:26PM]

That whole site seems to be throwing conspiracy theories left and right.

Love the last sentence too. "No one does nothing."

[R0B3RT @ Jun 13th 2008 2:37PM]

Wow that video was eriely like the Japanese one maybe some one picked up his project off the patents and built it with out the original.

[pbase @ Jun 13th 2008 3:45PM]

The actual last sentence on the water car site is:

"Stanley is gone and we continue to buy gasoline and we continue to create global warming at a alarming rate and no one does nothing."

Quoting only part of the last sentence is a classic "out of context" situation. The entire sentence makes much more sense.

[watt @ Jun 13th 2008 4:46PM]

Not really, then it means, " everyone does something." That implies we're all of us working on this, every one.

[Andrews_Flash @ Jun 18th 2008 10:42PM]

I am 67 years old and when I was a kid, "Popular Science" was my favorite magazine. I remember reading an article about a car that ran on nothing but water, as I recall it now. However, that was the one and only time I saw anything about it. What happened? Was it a sham, was the guy bought off, or was he "sent" off? Who knows.

[Eric @ Sep 4th 2008 1:00AM]

**General Reply**

I patiently have read almost all of these posts and I've come away with something. I am not one to FLAME but If I don't say it...I'm going to EXPLODE...

Most everyone here is either getting OFF TOPIC or is just plain old STUPID. Stay on topic! Don't get distracted, remember what the facts are and if you don't KNOW what they are STUDY until you do. Don't believe what I'm going to tell you, take it into -unbiased- consideration, verify it, THEN Speak...

The problem is ICE's (Internal Combustion Engines) are the wrong transport solution, they pollute and cost too many CENTS per mile to operate...now, the answers to this PROBLEM lie in the following concepts:

1) On-board Hydrogen Extraction from water through Electrolosis, then 2) Feeding the Fuel Cell with Made on Demand Hydrogen to produce electricity from the H-Cell to run an electric car OR (in the case of alternative fuel for your presently owned ICE vehicle):

1) On-board Hydrogen Extraction from water through Electrolosis, retard ignition timing, 2) replace fossil fuel with Hydrogen that is made on-demand. ICE engines will theoretically run fine (with minor adjustments) with Propane, Butane or Hydrogen INSTEAD of the Dinosaur Juice.

Get the concepts INTO YOUR HEAD, don't let yourself get drawn into the TRIVIAL.

THIS MATTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This/THESE technologies EXIST NOW and can also (and should be) utilized to get you OFF THE GRID for essentially FREE POWER for your HOME as well.

Best Wishes, Please Make this Happen!!! Eric

[Greg Thompson @ Jun 13th 2008 2:16PM]

And I assume the by-product of these things is pure oxygen which is highly flammable... so let's see, we've got pure hydrogen and pure oxygen in this contraption meanwhile when transporting those materials you have to have special permits and you can't travel through or on all surfaces. I bet the terrorists are loving this! We're all doomed thanks to the invention of the MEA!!!! Once Saddam or Barrack or Hitler get their hands on the MEA it's all over. I hope they have robots protecting this thing. Only the robots can save us from ourselves now, only the robots.

[Jake Tobak @ Jun 13th 2008 2:33PM]

You don't mean Barack Obama do you? Or did you mean Osama Bin Laden? Cause Bin Laden would fit in with those other folks a lot better than Barack.

[Dean @ Jun 13th 2008 9:59PM]

Considering both Hitler and Saddam are dead, it would be quite impressive if they got their hands on any technology at all.

[Andrew @ Jun 14th 2008 12:19AM]

Was this intentionally a Hunter S, and not Greg Thompson comment? I can't find the beginning of the joke. Assuming the hydrogen and oxygen flaming car part was serious, why don't we just do with it what we do with the outputs of our cars and shoot it into the air? There's already plenty of H2 and O2 in the air, and it doesn't make my snot grey when it backfires like a diesel.

[Motoken @ Jun 14th 2008 12:13AM]

oxygen is not flammable... fires use oxygen as fuel to keep burning, while yes fires are more dangerous in a pure oxygen rich environment they are not the cause of the flame. also the car would be safer then normal cars, since all you have in the tank is water and the only hydrogen being produced is in small quantities for the moving of the pistons.

conventional cars are more dangerous seeing as gas is highly flammable.

[Yoann @ Jun 13th 2008 2:18PM]

I don't understand where the MEA thing take the energy to split the H2O molecule

[Ken @ Jun 13th 2008 2:19PM]

Of course, something is amiss. No external input, runs on water, exhausts water as waste... That equation don't jive. They don't proclaim an electrolysis mechanism. Rather, they mention some type of metal reaction. I'm gonna go and guess that there is an oxidation going on freeing up the hydrogen. My bet is they're using lithium. After a while, you're gonna have to replace the lithium. The lithium metal is where the energy is coming from, no the water.

Also, 300W motor is not enough to power a car. That's only 0.4 HP. Shady, shady, shady.

[Ken @ Jun 13th 2008 2:20PM]

"no the water" = "not the water"

sorries

[Ken @ Jun 13th 2008 2:24PM]

They could also be using magnesium water-activated batteries like those found in buoys.

[patsy @ Jun 13th 2008 4:31PM]

> The lithium metal is where the energy is coming from, no the water.

Exactly. Some people just need to endlessly repeat to themselves "water is not a fuel" until perhaps one day it will sink in. The other thing you hear is "this membrane works like a catalyst that breaks down the water." The only problem is that a catalyst provides an alternate lower energy path from a high energy state to a low energy state. No catalyst I've ever heard of takes you the other way, unless you call some form of energy a catalyst.

[David @ Jun 13th 2008 4:54PM]

Another way is gallium-aluminum pellets (see Jerry Woodall's work). Same result, though ... the pellets are oxidized and, once consumed, need to be exchanged for fresh ones and energy used to recycle the oxidized pellets back into fresh ones.

Although energy is thus consumed, this is a case of hoping that centralized energy production and consumption can be cleaner and more efficient than having to transmit energy over great distances or generate it locally. Another favorable argument is that transferring water and occasionally swapping out a tank of pellets is quicker than a multi-hour battery recharge.

[jkr @ Jun 14th 2008 2:20AM]

you are one of the few intelligent posters here. I can't believe how many people think that this is real. "as long as you have a bottle of water, it will run", wtf. It never really hit me the dire state of education, until reading these replies. What's worse, is that 15-25% of the posts here are about the looks of the car, ungh.

[phanbouy @ Jun 14th 2008 12:46AM]

maybe so. still, SUCK IT, big oil!

[TGP @ Jun 15th 2008 9:14PM]

I'm with Ken, this is just not right. If you follow believe their claims you will be violating entropy. Typically, this is not a practical thing to do.

[Bevo4138 @ Jun 13th 2008 2:25PM]

Think of all the people/countries that make $B's off of oil. Now you introduce a technology that will effectively take most of their future $ away. How many of those people/countries would do whatever it takes to make sure that new technology never makes it to market????

I for one, would not like to live within 30 miles of wherever this is being developed (It's the coward in me).

[Stephen Lang @ Jun 13th 2008 3:01PM]

I don't understand why all the grief over the shoddy looks of the car. The point is not what the car looks like, but the underlying technology propelling it.

But as some other posters have commented, the underlying science seems very iffy. Yes it can be chemical electrolysis, but what about chemical consumption? And can this thing really generate enough fuel to move an automobile? If any of these 'well-known' processes were actually this efficient, we'd already have viable hydrogen-powered vehicles, plus an abundant source of clean energy for basically everything else.

Let's worry about these practical matters first, before reaching for our tinfoil hats and worrying about oil industry hitmen.