If Prince Charles can run his car on wine, why can't yours run on water?
By Roy Collins
With gas prices rising again (the laws of commerce dictate that what goes down must go up), more and more money conscious Americans are beginning to look closely at the idea of running their cars on water. Crazy, huh? Almost as crazy as trying to run your car on your favourite cocktail. Fill her up with Pina Colada, why don't you? So crazy that some of the world's most innovative people have been advocating and using alcohol in their vehicles for years.
Brazil has been using alcohol combined with conventional fuel for 25 years and as long ago as 2005, cars running on an ethanol-petrol mix began outselling those using regular unleaded and diesel. And in UK, no less a personage than His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, the next king of England, is now running his vintage Aston Martin DB6 on white wine. Sadly, not a vintage Sauvignon Blanc but surplus English wine from a nearby estate distilled to allow the Prince’s 38-year-old model to run on 100 per cent bioethanol fuel.
This is not to suggest that we should all boycott the gas station and reach for the gin bottle or squirt several gallons of Jim Beam into the tank when we next need to fill up for a long drive. But it is only a small leap of the imagination to running your car on wine, like Prince Charles, to running it on water.
We are not talking Evian here, which would set you back more per gallon than gas and which, for those of you that haven’t noticed, is ‘naive’ spelled backwards. We are talking about the stuff that comes out of your tap. H2O, as every fourth grader knows (well, maybe not) is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen and scientists have known for years how to separate the hydrogen for use as fuel.
The extracted gas is known as HHO, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. It can double or even triple your miles per gallon, cutting down stops at service areas where your wallet gets stripped out not just at the pumps but in the over-priced shops as the kids clear the racks of chips, cookies and sweets. What is more, water based HHO helps clean out your engine, so that your old bone shaker will quickly turn into a smoother ride than Prince Charles’s Aston Martin.
Best of all, using HHO makes for a cleaner planet. So you can save money, flip the finger at the greedy OPEC oil nations, and help to make the world more environmentally friendly. So you can feel good about yourself, while saving thousands of dollars. By reducing your carbon footprint, you might also get a handout from the tax man. How much better could it get?
You do not need to be a grease monkey or study for a degree in mechanical engineering to convert your car to run on water. There are many complete, do-it-yourself systems out there with step by step instructions, which allow even drivers who have never dared look under the hood before to convert their gas guzzler into an eco-chariot. And you don’t have to be the future King of England to afford them. You’ll just feel like royalty sailing majestically down the US freeways as rising gas prices no longer put you off making that long planned trip.
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