The Speculist

...but then again, I've often wondered if there wasn't a solution like this sitting out there somewhere waiting for someone to find it:

A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. When it becomes commercial in a few years time, the system will be incorporated into cars that will cost about the same as existing conventional cars to run, and will be completely emission free.

From reading the full article, it sounds as though the car will actually require two fuel sources -- water and a very heavy metal coil which enables the production of free hydrogen by producing metal oxide (what folks like us call rust, one presumes) as the by-product of running the engine. Apparently the driver would need to put water in the tank on a par with putting gas into the fuel tank of a conventional vehicle. How long the coil lasts is not stated, but seeing as it weighs 100 Kg, one would hope that the driver won't need to go sticking in a new one every week.

Via Kurzweil AI.

UPDATE: Plenty of healthy skepticism about this over at SlashDot, where I got the link to the cover story of the latest New Scientist -- Metal: The Fuel of the Future.