It’s hard to escape coming across the name “Stan Meyers” when researching this technology. Stan Meyers began making news in the early 1990’s, having claimed a major breakthrough in Hydrogen power. In fact, he attracted the attention of the Pentagon with his breakthrough (their interes: “Star Wars” and tanks. Oh well, whatever it takes to get this idea moving). It seams that he was able to surmount that nasty barrier where converting one form of energy into another always results in an overall reduction in energy, not more. With minimal amps (1/2) from a battery, Stan was able to separate the hydrogen molecule from the oxygen molecule in ordinary tap water (H2O). The hydrogen, being flammable, could then be used as a combustible agent to drive pistons in an engine. In 1998, he made national news when he powered a small car using this technology from New York to Los Angeles on nothing more than 28 gallons of water. The “black box” behind all this was a device he called a “Water Fuel Cell”. He expected to be able to manufacture and sell these engines for around $1500.

Here is a video about it:

But, Stan died shortly after that journey: he was poisoned to death. A rather persistent and nasty rumor blames a hit-man from the middle east with obvious interest in seeing such an invention disappear. Another related rumor says Stan was offered $1 billion dollars to dump the engine and retire – but he refused, and suffered the unfortunate consequences.

So, is it real? Well, in a way. BMW has a prototype car they call the Hydrogen 7 (pictured). They state that: “Our long-term EfficientDynamics strategy can be summed up with one vehicle: the BMW Hydrogen 7. As the world’s first luxury performance sedan with hydrogen drive, it runs on the most plentiful element in the world and emits virtually nothing but water vapor”. However, it runs on especially processed hydrogen (ahh, the big business “hook”?), that must be dispensed at stations much like, or as an addition to, current gas stations. In their words, the Hydrogen 7 is not yet available “because the infrastructure for refueling a hydrogen internal combustion engine is not yet complete”.

Well, at least they are working on it, and to my knowledge nobody has been “wacked” by oil interests as of yet. Keep tuned, we may be emerging on a breakthrough that will free us from the oil dependence nightmare.