Above and below: The RMC Scorpion, America's newest supercar, on sale soon! And it runs partly on water, using electrolysis applied to water, plus injection of the resultant hydrogen to significantly boost the gasoline engine's power and efficiency! WTF!
Story here.
Hoaxical or flimsy new gimmick, or great, revolutionary technology destined for future commonality like turbochargers, overhead cams and multi-valve heads?
We'll find out real soon, as it's supposed to be available in January '09.
The system, which is dubbed 'H2GO' and works in tandem with a regular petrol engine, separates the water using electrolysis into its base hydrogen and oxygen elements. The hydrogen is then mixed with petrol and injected into the air intake, as normal. Hydrogen is carbon free and has a higher octane rating than petrol, so CO2 is reduced and performance is improved.
That means the Scorpion's Honda sourced 3.5-litre V6 engine generates 300bhp and propels the 998kg car from 0-100 Km per hour in around four seconds, all the while returning 1.60 km per litre. A twin-turbo 'HX' version is available too, with 450bhp and a top speed of over 321 Km per hour.
I think "1.6 km per litre" (translating to a horrendously measly 4.5 mpg US???) is an extremely erroneous figure- if my car got that, then on the 50-litre tank, I'd just get 80 km, whereas in reality I get well over 500 km. So I'd ignore that figure, assuming it's a typo by a journalist who doesn't understand cars very well. Besides, I just checked one of my car coffee-table books, a British one, and found that the old gas-gulping 1970 Aston Martin DBS V8 gets twice the efficiency at 3.2 km/l, or just 9 mpg US. Compare that to my car, a Chevy Cobalt, which gets about 30 mpg US.
Sales begin in January, but with only 200 cars planned initially environmentally savvy supercar fans need to be quick to get their hands on one. Priced at around $176,000 for the standard car and $296,868 for the HX, potential suitors will need to be rich too. However, there's good news for the rest of us, because the hydrogen injection system will go on sale as an aftermarket kit for any car.
Due to hit the shelves in January too, the $1,112 kit can be retro fitted to any motor and will improve fuel consumption by 20-25 percent, reducing emissions to boot. See, who said limited run motor show supercar concepts are irrelevant?
Hmm... interesting. The cost of the electrolysis/injection system doesn't, at first, seem too high, though one would have to add the cost of a mechanic's labor and the cost of the very-likely voidance of the vehicle's warranty, if applicable, plus since the technology is so newfangled, there's likely to be serious reliability problems and potential compatibility problems with engines that weren't necessarily designed to accommodate/integrate such a system's integration. So the fuel-economy gain wouldn't necessarily be enough to make it worth the cost and risk, perhaps not even if you're on the road all day long, like a taxi driver (taxi drivers are already turning to hybrids, which actually have proven as reliable as anything else on the road, including the surprisingly very long-lived battery packs which have easily gone 400,000 km in taxis without replacement and still counting, plus save mountains of gas and money compared to non-hybrids).
Is this snake oil? Is it part of the big Chicken Little "climate-change" moneymaking scare scam started by Al Gore? Is someone trying to make a fast buck? Is this another Bricklin, another DeLorean? Another Tucker Torpedo? Or even worse?
Or could it be the next big thing in automotive powerplant tech?
We'll see. Might as well do a little online research just for the fun of it to see what other automotive websites are saying about this thing.
Nevertheless, that car there- man, does it look cool, eh? Looks like they took an old Lambo Diablo and gave it an entirely new skin.
Hmm... you know, maybe they should've called that car the "Barack" or the "Obama" or the "BHO"... it bedazzles, sounds like a miracle-worker, is well-spoken of, but I have doubts as to its being for real or its likelihood of performing reliably, if at all. Something tells me that it could well prove to be another Torpedo/DeLorean/Bricklin.
