Yes, I believe I read some where that the first cars were indeed powered by steam.

Why not? Think of a steam engine and you will get the idea.

"Running of water" is a bit deceptive. It runs of hydrogen produced when the water reacts with a chemical it also carries. Which is like saying water can make you drunk because you add water to whisky and get drunk. It is the chemical that powers the car, using the water to help.

Probably, although I don't know what source you are refering to. I don't understand the mechanics of it real well, but if you're interested, I know at least one sci-fi/fantasy author worked it out pretty good: L.E.Modesitt, Jr. in his 'ghost' trilogy. I found it an interesting concept at any rate.

I think they have made cars that can run off of Hydrogen, so there is 2 hydrogens in water...could be possible!

A car, or any device, cannot be run solely off of water (with one or two caveats I'll address later). The problem with water is that it is a very low energy and stable compound. It is such a low energy compound that nearly all reactions that involve fire ("rapid oxidation") result in CO2 and H2O. So, why doesn't water burn? Because, it's already been burnt! In other words, it's a product of burning, and burning releases most of the energy bound up in a molecular compound, so there can't be much energy left in the products of the reaction. The respondents who mentioned steam power are correct only in the most technical sense. Sure, there are things powered by steam, but in that case, water (the steam) is simply an internal, intermediate carrier of energy. In all steam devices, the actual energy is provided by some other compound that contains energy, such as coal. In most steam engines, the coal is burnt, which is the reaction that releases the energy from the coal. The energy from the reaction is then transferred into water, which becomes steam. The steam, under pressure, can then turn a turbine or whatever and transfer the energy into some mechanical device. But the water itself doesn't *provide* any of the energy, it merely carries it. One of the things that makes water such a good carrier of energy in a steam engine design is that it is such a stable and low-energy molecule. You'd never use gasoline to do that job, for instance, because over a certain temperature it would explode in the turbine. In fact, this is essentially what a diesel engine does--the "turbine" in this case are the cylinders in the crank case, and when the gas is put under a certain pressure, the temperature increases to the point where the diesel fuel explodes. There are no spark plugs in a diesel engine to provide a spark--the pressure itself causes the temperature to rise, and the temperature alone is enough to cause combustion. Now, the caveats. In truth, just about anything will "burn" if you put enough energy into it. For example, if you were to put water into a blast furnace at an iron smelting site, where the temperature exceeds several thousand degrees, some amount of those water molecules would absorb so much of the energy they would indeed chemically change into other oxygen-containing compounds. There may be some resulting compounds that contain oxygen that are lower energy than water, in which case we would consider that particular molecule to have "burnt," yielding energy. However, for most of these reactions if you total the energy on the product side of the reaction and compare it to the energy on the reactant side, it's not a sustainable reaction because energy must be placed into the system as a whole. The other exception is nuclear power. With fusion power, the nuclei of multiple hydrogen atoms in water could be combined to form other atoms with lower nuclear energies. However, these kinds of reactions, though they ultimately release more energy than you put in, require a LARGE amount of energy to be put in, and therefore would not be practical in something as small as a car. (Although, many submarines are nuclear powered, so we may not be as far off as some might think.) So, in conclusion, no car is likely to be invented any time soon that can run off of water. Besides, this might not be such a great idea anyway--after fuel oil, one of the resources that is starting to get attention because of scarcity concerns is fresh water. So, converting our cars all to water might simply replace one impending ecological problem with another.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9iWaCMbw60

YES Now I know that trying to predict the future is hard, but I reckon that an electric car, powered by a fuel cell running on hydrogen, could be a goer! If you remember back to your chemistry classes at school, water is H2O. In other words, a molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen. If you use energy, and pass electricity through water, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. And you can run this reaction backwards, and combine hydrogen and oxygen to give you water and energy. (In fact, the word, "hydrogen", means "maker of water" in the original Greek language.) http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/hydrogen.htm

Are you referring to steam or a water/hydrogen separator? Interesting.

I think with the right engineering, anything is possible.

They used to. It was called a steam engine they aren't very efficient.

Yes, it has been done. It is basically a hydrogen powered car, but instead of having to obtain liquid hydrogen, you can use plain water. The car extracts the liquid hydrogen from it. http://waterpoweredcar.com/ http://www.waterfuelcell.org/

Hydrogen is made from h2o by DC current.The positive creates oxygen and the negative producess hydrogen.Salt water even producess more.Mix them together and you have fuel.

Severoon covered most points so here I'll just deal with the idea of getting hydrogen from water to power a car. We got a problem here. In order to extract hydrogen from water we have to put energy into the system. How much energy? The same amount that we will gain from burning hydrogen again to power our car. Plus we need more energy to power our hydrogen extraction apparatus. Therefore, to use hydrogen from water as a fuel, we need to put in more energy than what we will get out. We would be better off just using whatever energy source that created the hydrogen to power the car instead. Something else to think about: The reason oil is a fuel is because we can use one barrel of oil to dig another ten (,say,) barrels of oil out of the ground. One day we may need ten barrels of oil just to get enough power to dig one barrel of oil out of the ground. At this point, oil won't last very long at all, it will cease to be classifiable as a 'fuel', and we'll have to find another energy source.

It's not just the water, it's the various things you can do with the water.

No, I've never heard of this (I live in Aus). Maybe you are confusing it with Hydrogen power? they separate the Hydrogen from the oxygen to power buses at the moment, or at least in Perth anyway. To do that they use water.

If we use new solar technoligy to make clean energy(ACtoDC) to make hydrogen,There will be no polution made as a by-product.And we have plenty of sun & water.Maybe we can get the price down to $1.00 or less per-gal.$

In 2007, researchers at Purdue University in the U.S. invented a way of creating hydrogen from water using small bits of aluminum with a particular coating on them. The idea is that you get a load of these dry aluminum bits in your tank and then when you add water, it creates hydrogen which is then run through a fuel cell. Of course, the aluminum bits can only be used once before needing to be reprocessed, but the claim was there is enough energy in that tank of aluminum for a 350 mile range on the car. So, you do fill your tank with water, but the aluminum has to be in there first, and really, the aluminum is the real fuel, not the water. Whole article is here: http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

i beleive it will happen, you can run a car off of hydrogen from an electroysis reation ,but , it won't produce a lot of hydrogen with a 12 volt car barttery, from water

yes as a matter of fact the person who invented it died under misterious circumstances

Cars run when there is an energy supplied to its overall system. Moreover, the society has been accustomed to using fossil fuel to energize these vehicles. On the other hand, water is most popularly known by the term "hydro-power". China had already introduced its hydro-powered generator in the past years and it had been widely accepted by the public. http://www.runyourcaronwaterreviews.org/

Water is most popularly known by the term "hydro-power". China had already introduced its hydro-powered generator in the past years and it had been widely accepted by the public. Needless to say, it is high time that all and sundry must realize the truth to the usefulness of water in running a car. http://www.runyourcaronwaterreviews.org/

At some point any type of matter could fuel a fire but we don't refer to them as normal fires. Chemistry wise I don't believe normal propellants are available in the right quantities for use in a normally aspirated car. With the correct atomic separtion techniques fuel and oxidizers may be present but with the standard car I wouldn't think the yield wouldn't have any worth in our current technology. Just adding radiation to water would make it unstable enough to deliver kinetic force. Perhaps plug in a microwave oven running of solar panels and boil water (or another liquid) into steam (or pressurized liquid). :)