The San Francisco Citizen

Reuters has a short video report from a few weeks back about Japanese company claiming to be working on a car that “runs on water.” Check it: “Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan“.

Now, here’s the beef, this quote from reporter(?) Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri: “…Genepax may well have the solution they’ve been looking for.” No. Genepax does not have the solution they’ve been looking for. Simple as that. You’d think there might be a retraction from Reuters by now, and yes, a few days ago they ran a kind of follow-up: “Professor doubts water car claims“ 

The problem with the title of the follow-up report is that the professor doesn’t just doubt the claims, he thinks it’s impossible for the Japanese company’s claims to be true. Now if Reuters had put these two stories together and maybe paid an editor to be a little more careful with the final product, then the news service wouldn’t have anything to be embarrassed about.  

As an alternative, Reuters could do a story on my Japanese water car. I won’t let them see what’s inside the magic engine box - they’ll just have to trust me.    

See you  in the funny pages (or the MSM)!

It seems Volkswagen is making progress with fuel cell technology. VW dropped by a few places in the bay area this past week to show off their latest effort in the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. VW just happens to be introducing their “Tiguan” (tiger plus iguana, in German) crossover vehicle soon, so why not put this experimental propulsion technology in the latest platform?

CNET was there at the W Hotel and they took some photos. Wired also took some shots, plus they have a nice rundown on the whole affair.

This Tiguan uses hydrogen fuel cell technology, which differs from what BMW has done with hydrogen so far. BMW’s approach is to just modify a typical internal combustion engine so that it will accept either gasoline or hydrogen. Comedian Jay Leno explains. But this method comes with its downsides.

VW was also pleased to show off the new fifty-state-legal Jetta TDI diesel. You can’t hardly tell it’s a diesel. Look to see lots of these TDI cars on the streets of San Francisco soon. It seems everyone who owns a TDI just raves about this high-MPG technology.

Invizabul driver in the SOMA. This new 50-state-legal Jetta has plenty of power and very high MPG - perhaps you’d prefer this VW over the slightly larger and more expensive Toyota Prius hybrid?   

And let’s not forget about the Jetta TDI Cup Race, which shows the young’uns that diesel engines have come a long way since the bad old days. It’s the first clean diesel racing series evah.

A  speedy TDI at the yummy XYZ restaurant in San Francisco.

VW says that their hydrogen fuel cell technology is seven to ten years away from being available. The sooner the better.