Genepax shows off water-powered fuel cell vehicle
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jun 13th 2008 1:49PM
posted Jun 13th 2008 1:49PM
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]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
This would be perfect to keep in the back of my SUV for emergencies...like running out of gas or getting a flat tire.
uh, clarification - that is a joke, right?
Sarcasm can be hard to pick up in text form :-)
@Mile
Exactly what I was thinking! It would fit perfectly in the back of my F250 Super Duty Crew Cab with room to spare.
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.
tried to be first...
:-(
"suprisingly"
british accent makes me sick =\
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 :)
If one has nothing to say they can always blame someone's accent. That should all be in Japanese, just for you.
why ?
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????
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.
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.
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.
Yes, but, where exactly does one find water to convert into oxygen on Mars?
Electrolysis you say? So now I can drive my car and be stubble free too!? yippee!
polar ice caps.
DOOOOM!
I was put off future scientific advances by that game...
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.
SUCK IT, Big Oil!
But I would throw rocks at anyone in America that drives that piece of crap. You might save some money, but you're either a fruit cake or a crazy old lady for driving this thing.
No one is actually driving this particular car except the people developing and testing the technology, moron. Hopefully (and unlikely), this sort of technology will get massive funding and will become smaller, more efficient and run in normal-looking and non-gay cars.
what the %#^& does the external look of the car matter? You need to go back to grade school if thats more important than the fact that this could cause the average commuter to save thousands per year. If you say: man...it looks too gay for me to drive it so ima stick with my SUV; then you need to be castrated and thrown in a deep river with your feet in a cement bucket.
I would have NO problem driving a hot pink car or one that said "i support terrorism" if i was getting just under 200 miles per gallon of WATER.
i dont get some ppl. i dont buy a Prius cuz its small and ugly, but id buy a Honda Accord or Nissan Xterra size hybrid, hydrogen, H2O vehicle if they made one. But i know this is a concept vehicle and looks isnt the story here.
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!"
Apparently you did not watch the video as it says it runs on any type of water include ocean water there Einstein.
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?
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...)
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.
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.
Considering both Hitler and Saddam are dead, it would be quite impressive if they got their hands on any technology at all.
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.
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.
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
That whole site seems to be throwing conspiracy theories left and right.
Love the last sentence too. "No one does nothing."
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.
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.
Not really, then it means, " everyone does something." That implies we're all of us working on this, every one.
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.
**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
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.
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.
[...]It uses a chemical reaction to split the H from the 2 O's.[...]
I thought it was H2O... but maybe I'm wrong
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)
I don't understand where the MEA thing take the energy to split the H2O molecule
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.
"no the water" = "not the water"
sorries
They could also be using magnesium water-activated batteries like those found in buoys.
> 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.
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.
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.
maybe so. still, SUCK IT, big oil!
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.
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).
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.
There is still need for oil, regardless of this thing's fuel supply. Tires, plastic, lubricants, etc.
Can you guys not read? There are two ways to break apart water. Electrolysis and chemically. This uses chemicals, not electrolysis. The electrolysis versions you see around like water4gas use the "extra" energy created from your alternator to add a small amount of hydrogen and boost your mpg. Though those are highly controversial as to whether or not they actually do anything. This is completely different.
If it breaks the water apart chemically, wouldn't it require some sort of chemicals? What sort of miracle chemicals are these that they are using? A catalyst wouldn't work because they'd still need something to input energy to break apart the water molecules. A reactant wouldn't work because you'd eventually run out.
Hmm and here I was, thinking electrolysis _was_ a chemical reaction.
This is based on a gee wiz. That was the car that had to classify itself as a motorized quad bike to make it legal to sell a machine that failed to attain a single star in the euroncap safety tests.
The only good thing here is that they are one step closer to running normal cars on water. Move along...
Don't they say that water cost more than gas?
Gallon of water at my work is 1.57 plus tax gallon of gas is 3.93 a gallon not sure your math is right...
Comparing the price of water to the price of gas -
Let's make this comparison fair. You don't get gas in bottles - it's transported through pipeline systems. So, if you're comparing prices, you compare with the price of water transported through pipelines, which is pennies per gallon, even in water-starved deserts. There you go.
*Bottled* water *used* to.
If you buy bottled water at a rock concert then, yeah. Otherwise, even bottled water from a convenience store is cheaper. At least that's the case in my area, where gas is nearing $5/gal.
I wonder how long this is going to surface before it "disapears" like the elctric cars.
I think this will be a great solution, I just hope that what was mentioned above won't happen.
AKBlade13
So you throw rocks are "fruit cakes" and old ladies? I don't think I'm either of those, but you know what I do like? MONIEZ! Water, last time I checked, is a little cheaper than gas, so I'd probably go with something like this if it was cheap enough for driving around town. I'd take the Escalade for highway driving though.
Well first you should figure out how to reply to someone's post so I find it without reading everyone else's posts. Secondly, like I said before, you're paying a lot more up front for the high tech fuel system so you're spending more money up front. You'd have to drive this thing for 5-10 years before you break even and start saving any money. My other car is actually an Escalade. We just bought it 3 weeks ago and it's the BEST time to buy an SUV since everyone is trying to sell them for so little. So we picked up a 2006 for under $23,000. Not to shabby at all considering it was $60,000 just 2 years ago. We saved so much on an SUV right now that it way more than makes up for the cost of gas. Some people are just looking at things one way, we saw an opportunity to finally buy a spacious beautiful vehicle and we took it.
I do know how to reply to posts, I did it to another post before yours, it was just a mistake, so calm the **** down. You're obviously a horrible person and I don't think you should die, but maybe it would be ok if you just never talked or breeded again.
why does brilliance in engineering comes at the expense of design? so often too.
alexander ayzenband
It's just a prototype. I wouldn't pin them down yet on the actual design.
Once again, no need to post your name when it's already at the top of your comment.
Hey, i'd rather have a 200HP rated one of these in about 20 generations time, than pay BP, Exxon, Esso etc. 30% of my income every year. Mind due they will probably just find a way to only make them operate properly with 'special water' that's conveniently supplied & taxed by the same oil multinationals. Swines.
why do all these alternative fuel cars look so god $%$##@ ugly???
even before gas hit 4 bux, i wanted the Prius but it was butt ugly! i ended up gettin the lexus gs.
If this were true, it would break the laws of thermodynamics, and would possibly be the biggest most amazing discovery of all time.
there must be an additional energy source allowing them to break down the H2O molecules. they say its a "chemical process" so that would mean there is some other chemical source of energy that (most likely) would be costly and energy intensive to produce.
In other words, this could not possibly be any better than an elaborate battery. the energy has to come from somewhere.
there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Despite the overwhelming laws of thermodynamics indicating quite correctly that there is no such thing as free energy, it is paradoxically my view that water does contain this energy in the form of hydrogen and the means to separate it has always been the problem. lets look at this a different way, to get to oil we need to use a drill to extract and energy is expounded in harvesting the black gold.
Despite being a scientist and a believer in thermal dynamics, I believe there is certainly a solution now or in the near future for cracking this problem, more to the point i believe government agencies around the world would have already discussed this problem and the net result would be a water commodity tax greatly in excess of the premium that we are already paying for oil, it could in a perverse way demand all sorts of alterations to rain water system (roofs) to ensure we are never allowed to harness this free energy, an occean and waterside police force, etc.
From a government perspective there is only one way to control the use of water for transport the most likely outcome would be for governments to monitor water used as fuel from the exhaust system or drive per mile in the form of road pricing there are no benefits for the consumer from an economic savings point of view whatsoever, though there is some evidence for the merits of a cleaner planet, i fear it would certainly ruin the ecomomies of the middle east and other oil producing countries.
50 years from now I would think it will certainly happen, as you look through history and science and see what technological advances we have surpassed only a fool would say that we are incapable of solving a minor problem of splitting water using very little energy, look at the crt and valve, replaced by transistor, the fact is 10 million transistors can be made to use less energy than it took to run 1 valve nobody would have predicted that, trust me this will happen,
Dr. Luke Tanning (rikkk@fsmail.net)
This looks just like the REVA electric car:
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4EGLC_enIN278IN278&q=reva
They took the REVA plug-in electric car and added the fuel cell to it.
The fuel cell itself is likely based on a reaction between aluminum powder and the water. There is talk of using nano-technology surfaces to perform the conversion, but those are a way out
For example:
http://www.maxell.co.jp/jpn/news/2006/news060424.html
(Translation here:)
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maxell.co.jp%2Fjpn%2Fnews%2F2006%2Fnews060424.html&sl=ja&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8stApCmxYEM They stopped it 30 years ago. It's real very real and you all talk as if your the experts on electrolysis? Yes this uses it. It's probably similar to stan meyer's system. He was assasinated. Now please people saying "no such thing as a free lunch" stop posting here. You don't know what your talking about
Really? What kind of car do you drive?
you can't assassinate a fraud, dumbass
About Stan Meyer's system:
In 1996, inventor Stanley Meyer was sued by investors to whom he had sold dealerships, offering the right to do business in Water Fuel Cell technology. According to The Times, Meyer claimed in court that his invention "opened the way for a car which would 'run on water', powered simply by a car battery."[1] The car would even run perpetually without fuel since the energy needed to continue the "fracturing" was low enough for the engine's dynamo to recharge the car's battery.[1] His car was due to be examined by the expert witness Michael Laughton, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. However, Meyer made what Professor Laughton considered a "lame excuse" on the days of examination and did not allow the test to proceed.[1] The Water Fuel Cell, on the other hand, was examined by three expert witnesses in court who found that there "was nothing revolutionary about the cell at all and that it was simply using conventional electrolysis".[1]
On the basis of the evidence the court found Meyer guilty of "gross and egregious fraud" and ordered to repay the investors their $25,000.[1]
And his death:
Stanley Meyer died at the age of 57 after eating at a restaurant on 21 March 1998. An autopsy report by Franklin County, Ohio coroner William R. Adrion concluded that Meyer, who suffered from high blood pressure, had died of a cerebral aneurysm.[6] Conspiracy theories persist, however, that he was poisoned, and that oil companies and the United States government were involved in his death.[7][8]. It is argued that this was done to suppress the technology, in spite of the fact complete plans remain available online[9]. To date, no one has used them to produce a working prototype.
He refused to have it tested in court and then dies from high blood pressure, which somehow translates into "technology suppressed, inventor assassinated."
.. and you don't know which, "you're" to use.
so i leave my car out in the rain with a funnel in the tank and I have unlimited range?
The mileage and the benefit to the environment...GREAT! The ass-beatings you would take from your friends for driving that ridiculous-looking thing...NOT SO GREAT!
Saying Stan Meyer was murdered over and over again doesn't make it true, there was no evidence. Further, it was never proven that his machine worked like he said it did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Meyer
"None of Meyer's claims about the car have been independently verified."
"On the basis of the evidence the court found Meyer guilty of "gross and egregious fraud" and ordered to repay the investors their $25,000."
also
"Stanley Meyer died at the age of 57 after eating at a restaurant on 21 March 1998. An autopsy report by Franklin County, Ohio coroner William R. Adrion concluded that Meyer, who suffered from high blood pressure, had died of a cerebral aneurysm.[6] Conspiracy theories persist, however, that he was poisoned, and that oil companies and the United States government were involved in his death.[7][8]. It is argued that this was done to suppress the technology, in spite of the fact complete plans remain available online[9]. To date, no one has used them to produce a working prototype."
The guy was just a fraud trying to make easy money.
There's a reason they call it the first LAW of thermodynamics
You know, I'm willing to bet that their goal with this car was not aesthetics...
Bring it on. Screw you guys with the Escalades and Hummers. I'd drive one of these tiny things anytime before getting it in the rear from the bastards controlling the oil.
I found it interesting that would run on different kinds of water (tap, river, sea), "even tea" ... While I can see a chemical reaction separating the water, what happens to the residue from using an impure water source?
20 years from now the former oil companies will have gone from selling us products that de-gunk your gasoline engine to products that remove plankton and algae slime from your fuel cell!
That's progress for you!
Did anybody forward this to GM and Ford?
"Even tea works"
lol so British
*cough*Scam! *cough, cough*
Remember that Irish company that said they created free energy last year?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/04/steorns-orbo-free-energy-machine-demonstrated-tomorrow/
Water is not a source of energy. Hydrogen gas is, which can be taken from water with an endothermic reaction. Whatever the hell you use to get the gas out of it - Electricity, lithium, dog doo on a stick - that's your energy source, not the water.
I don't believe for half a second that it's true. If it was, it would be mere miliseconds before one of the big carmakers snatched up the patents, in a hope to be the first to wield supremacy at the new water-car market.
yes, water IS energy: according to einstein: mass is energy. e=mc(squared)
I don't think you caught the math. She said it could travel at the speed of 80 km for one hour on one liter of water. 80km/l = 188 mpg!!! On Water!!! That thing is beautiful!!!
Um, considering that water shortages in the future are projected without introducing the consumption of it as a fuel. Considering we are already losing coastal waters around the water to rising sea levels. And considering the immense cost and complexity of building desalinization plants (including their own usage of fuels as well)...
What exactly is the advantage of shifting to a water-based vehicle other than lowering emissions? There are already existing technologies that solve that problem which can be used. Great technical feat, horrible idea to persue.
I think you are getting fresh water confused with salty/dirty water. The article claims that the car can run on ANY water so it's essentially free as you can use water from rain, river, ocean, etc..
They're saying this one will run on seawater (though they don't say how), which will come in handy when the oceans rise and you have waves breaking on your garage door. Fill 'er up!
The better question is do they have an emergency filter kit that can turn pee into clean water? You know incase you run out of water somewhere along the road. If NASA can recycle water in space, I'm sure they can do it to refuel your H20 care.
is that jason voorhees driving the car?
Uhhh. Did anyone lese notice jason sitting in the front seat?????