Why haven't we made water-powered cars yet?

The idea of a hydraulic car came into being many years ago. Verne (19th century French novelist, the author of Two Wan Li under the Sea) once wrote in 1874 that water is the coal of the future, so why are there no water-powered cars running all over the street now? In order to truly understand this problem, we need to carefully review those studies on hydrodynamic forces in modern history. A century after Verne put forward this idea, that is, during the American oil crisis in the 1970s, this idea was quite popular. An active inventor named Stanley Meyer applied for a patent for a car, claiming that it only needed 75 liters of pure water to cross the United States. It's a wonderful idea, but scientific principles don't support him. He got into a lawsuit for this invention.

By the beginning of 2000, these DIY packages were everywhere on the Internet. They can guarantee to turn your car into a water-oil hybrid and triple your fuel efficiency. At the same time, a company began to promote a water-powered car in the market, claiming that this car can solve the global warming problem. However, in the end, these prototypes all encountered a big trouble, the first law of thermodynamics: energy can not be generated out of thin air, nor can it disappear out of thin air.

So what is the relationship between them? Water itself is not fuel. Like carbon dioxide, water is only the product of fuel combustion. But there is still energy between the chemical bonds of water. Many inventions led by Mel are based on the process of electrolyzing water. Hydrogen produced by separating hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms from water can be used as fuel for the engine.

If the electric car is connected to a fuel cell, the best thing is that the emission of this chemical reaction is only water. This is the principle of a water-powered car, which is super clean, emission-free, and guilt-free when driving. Of course, such a good car does not exist, because water is quite stable, and the energy needed to decompose water is much greater than that generated by burning hydrogen, just like you are climbing a steep slide. Mel thinks that he has found a more energy-saving method to produce hydrogen than electrolytic water, but the energy consumed in the production process is higher than the energy that can be finally provided.

Today, after decades of research, electrolytic water is still not a reasonable way to produce hydrogen. If hydrogen is not produced from water, it is not a clean energy source. At present, only 4% of hydrogen products come from electrolyzed water, some of which come from solar energy, and most of the rest are produced from fossil fuels. Nevertheless, some scientists are still looking for a sustainable method to produce hydrogen, and the efficiency of electrolyzing water has doubled in recent years. Researchers at Stanford University say they have found a new method to produce hydrogen. We just need salt water and solar energy. Maybe one day we can really pull over and refuel with seawater. But before that, try riding a bike and taking a bus.