While looking at a legit weather site, there was a google add for this:

http://www.runyourscarwithwater.com/

Basically, run your car on water. I only scanned it, but it’s uses your car battery to convert water to ‘HHO’(whatever that actually is)... blah blah blah. I didnt honestly get past that it uses your car battery as the source of power.

Now, joke sites are fine, but this site is offering a guarantee and has a real paypal link.
Surely that is the kind of thing that gets you fined, and/or arrested for fraud?

Translation:

Use the car’s battery to break the water into two Hydrogen and one Oxygen (aka HHO), via electolysis. This can be burned, converting back to water vapor.

The trick is, it’s a *wasteful* method. You’re better off running the car directly off the battery. You will notice their method provides no means by which the battery is charged… However, they get to advertise it as ‘running your car off water’, in a method that *does* work, and so can offer all kinds of claims without any fear of legal issues.

Robin Bobcat - 20 May 2008 06:00 AM

However, they get to advertise it as ‘running your car off water’, in a method that *does* work, and so can offer all kinds of claims without any fear of legal issues.

I dunno, they use these phrases
“Your car will become at least 40% more fuel efficient and produce cleaner emissions”
and the guarantee graphic
“If, after 56 days, you still arent getting better fuel economy….“

Given the work I’ve done on alternate power vehicles, I can feel fairly safe in saying that over the long term, it has no chance of meeting 40% more fuel efficient. Short term battery drain, for a few KM, maybe. But then the battery has to be charged, so the equation balances out.

Anyway, it smacks so much of scam that only those that believe Nigerian Banker scams would believe this, so that should limit them to only a few hundred thousand people.

I ran my car on water once, but it sank.

Topic on main site, complete with much defending/debunking.

Basically it boils down to ‘yes you can run a car on hydrogen, but it’s far more expensive than running it on gasoline’.

Even Click and Clack got dragged into this controversy on Car Talk: http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/09.smil

Well, if they made the electrolysis and burning of resultant gases a closed system, you could have a theoretically infinate fuel efficiency, as the fuel is continually changing state..But you’d basically be running the thing off the battery in a very inefficient manner.

Far better to buy an electric car.

Didn’t they use to run cars off water?
It was called steam engines…

I think that was trains, but they used coal to make the steam, so…...

Robin Bobcat - 20 May 2008 06:00 AM

Translation:

Use the car’s battery to break the water into two Hydrogen and one Oxygen (aka HHO), via electolysis. This can be burned, converting back to water vapor.

I think the ones you see all over the web don’t actually run on the hydrogen produced this way, but rather just mix more of the air with hydrogen so that the engine runs extremely lean.  (The claims AussieBruce quoted make me think this is what they’re about.)

Trouble is, typical engines weren’t designed to run that lean (they get really hot) and there isn’t much evidence that doing this hydrogen “boost” does anything like what they claim anyway. 

I saw one of these where the guy filled the gas tank on his hydrogen boosted car, drove it some 50 miles, then topped it off and used THAT to calculate his fuel efficiency.  (If these things are making money, I’ve simply got to make a few more copies of that deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. . . .)

Hmm.. That would make more sense, and actually provide a fuel efficiency boost without sacrificing a battery to the gods. A few modifications and you’d have the equivalent of running a hydrogen tank line into your engine, which as Joe mentioned, would probably heat it up hideously.

And it’s not a great deal of hydrogen these things claim to use.  The one I read about said you add less than 1 quart of water per full tank of gasoline.