China’s water-fueled car is too good to be true

China’s first hydrogen car is a tale of exaggeration

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China’s water-fueled car is too good to be true

Published: 10:21pm, 27 May 2019Updated: 9:05am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

What if I told you that we could get emission-free, clean-energy cars using one of the most abundant substances in the world? In China, one company claims to have produced just that: The first water-fueled car.

Youngman Automobile and its president Pang Qingnian told local media last week that their vehicles can turn water into hydrogen in real time, generating energy the car can use to run. The company based in Nanyang, Henan province held an event inviting media and local government officials who praised the company’s achievements.

The news created great excitement on social media, but the publicity stunt didn’t go as planned. That’s because the underlying science wasn’t exactly sound.

Soon after initial reports, experts pointed out that fueling cars by water would be very hard to achieve.

"That's not possible," Guan Bin, an associate professor at the Institute of Internal Combustion Engines at Shanghai Jiaotong University, told CCTV.

State-owned media CCTV said that Youngman’s Pang Qingnian repeatedly avoided giving technical details about the car, saying it involved trade secrets. (Picture: CCTV)

Water-fueled cars have been a topic of discussion among engineers and conspiracy theorists alike for decades. To get the hydrogen needed to fuel a car, the equipment would have to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. However, splitting water molecules is hard -- they are very stable, which is why there’s so much water on Earth in the first place.