Water Powered Vehicle A Reality

If there just isn’t enough oil to go around, then let’s turn our energy needs to something that is overly abundant on the planet. Water seems like a good choice for an energy source, and many have tried. It looks like Genepax Co, a Japanese company, has been able to get a car to run on water. The engine gets its power by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes.

What’s really happening is that this is nearly a hydrogen powered car, but you don’t need to find the one or two lonely hydrogen refueling stations. Genepax has created what they call a “membrane electrode assembly” (MEA) that is able to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen using a chemical reaction. I’m not sure how it works exactly, and Genepax isn’t saying, but they claim their process can produce hydrogen for a longer time.

My favorite part about this little car is that you don’t need to have a pressurized hydrogen tank sitting in the back of your vehicle. Forget about how difficult it would be to refuel, why would I want a bomb in my trunk? I’m far more comfortable with a few jugs of water that get split up during the driving experience. It’s really too bad that being in the northeast eliminates many of these smaller, energy efficient, cars from practical use. Although I did see an electric car yesterday…I’ll have to make a note to ask those people how it handles come the blizzards in December.

The cost of the engine itself is around $18,000, which puts this little car on the impractical list. But Genepax hopes that if it can go into mass production the cost will reduce down to as little as $4,600.