Active Planet: Water powered cars?

The conspiracy theorists have a theory: Stan Meyer, a college drop out who claimed to have invented a device to extract more than 1000 times more hydrogen from water than conventional electrolysis, was killed by mysterious opponents of his technology.

Meyer was, on a good day, secretive. On a bad day he was paranoid. But he demonstrated a device to enough people to raise a serious possibility that cars could be powered on water from any source ranging from pure driven snow to sea water, and to do it without the need for cars to carry hydrogen.

For Meyer the process, whilst not simple, was simpler than the idea of tanks of gas filled up from specialist centres: a conductive material immersed in water was charged with a very low ampage and it “split” the water into hydrogen which the engine burned and oxygen which the car exhaled.

He secured patents in the USA and elsewhere having, he said, initially had his ideas rejected so he turned up at the US Patent Office, turned it on and convinced the examiner not only that it was a patentable and viable concept but that it actually worked.

He went on to convert a dune buggy to run on water by creating a small version of the device through which water passed and was converted.

Meyer refused to allow anyone to see the latest version of his devices. He claimed that he was under threat from all manner of sources and in a television interview with British TV he claimed that the US was spending USD200,000 million dollars on imported fuel and that “the Arabs” wanted to keep that money flowing. “The Arabs” he said had offered him vast sums of money to cease his research, but he had declined saying that his invention was “for the world.” But whilst his devices achieved sufficient credibility to be the subject of study by the US military, NASA and a host of academic scientists, he ran up against a range of problems. One, almost inevitably one might say, was that the academic community wanted to know more, but found it difficult to bridge the communication gap between their terminology and the simple English Meyer used.

Meyer was sometimes seen as a crank – although in interviews he was sensible and lucid when talking about his invention. However, outside his subject area, he was decidedly odd. He was nervous and paranoid. That conflicted with his need to get his product out into the market and known.

Meyer never produced his device commercially. He was so paranoid about his ideas being stolen that he refused to enter into commercial production agreements. He would only, he said, sell complete units. So when the US motor industry came calling, he told them that they could only buy complete kits from him. But he had neither the funds nor the production capacity to mass produce the devices.

Scientists reviewing his work all say “if it works,” - even those who have been present at or taken part in demonstrations. YouTube has a number of videos of demonstrations filmed by Meyer himself or his close friends.

In 1998, Meyer was eating in a Cracker Barrel diner when, witnesses say, he ran out shouting that he had been poisoned and after vomiting violently in the car park died in his car at the scene. But the post mortem report, web reports say, show that he suffered from an aneurysm in his brain, and that the vomiting was related to that. No poison, the report apparently says, was found in his system. There were claims that he was in the diner meeting NATO officials. The conspiracy theorists focus on the word “supposedly” in the coroner's report claiming that it is evidence of editorialising. However, as the only confirmed witness to the meeting was Meyer's brother Steve, and that it is perhaps unlikely that a meeting of such import involving NATO officials would be held in a chain-diner, the word “supposedly” seems entirely appropriate.

Steve Meyer claims that “sharks” came to his brother's home a week after his death and took away the dune buggy and all his life's work.

In the intervening 10 years, the motor industry has worked on the development of hydrogen fuel cells – but detractors say that the factories to build such cells are themselves massive polluters and that the fuel cell is inefficient.

But all of a sudden, Meyer has become a cause celebre. Someone claims to have been taken into an underground room at an undisclosed (but entirely civilian) location and quickly shown “the buggy” which was then immediately covered again with a sheet.

All over the internet, Meyer conspiracy theorists are talking up the concept of a water driven car.

Normally, this kind of thing happens when there is a big news story that interests many people and often in relation to an impending stock fraud: a classic pump and dump.

But this time it's different: this time the buzz coincides with dozens of adverts, particularly via Google's AdSense service, promoting ways of running your car on water. There are suddenly hundreds of websites with water, fuel and car or similar in their names.

The adverts are offering ways to run cars on water for a few dollars conversion fee.

Is this a technology whose time has come? Or a massive fraud on motorists?