We all know gasoline comes from oil, and we all know that oil is a non-renewable source of energy. Finding a new fuel source that could power our vehicles and also be renewable would be a wonderful invention for our planet. While we have come up with ethanol as a substitute for gasoline, the toxic emissions that come from burning it are extremely hazardous to our environment. Electric cars are also an option but they can take a very long time to charge, and the energy used to charge the batteries has to come from somewhere as well and that usually means “coal-burning facility”. Now there is another option for the environmentally conscious consumer!

NanoFlowcell has come up with a way to utilize hydrogen as a fuel source without having highly pressurized systems in place, since they can be rather dangerous. While there have been other potential manufacturers of hydrogen-fueled vehicles, NanoFlowcell seems to be the only one that has made it this close to the production line.

Genepax, a company based in Osaka, Japan in 2008, developed an energy generator that split water molecules to produce hydrogen and that was used to power an engine in a car. A membrane electrode assembly (MEA) was used to split the hydrogen molecule from the oxygen molecule via a chemical reaction. The cell only required air and water which removed the need for a hydrogen reformer or a high-pressure hydrogen tank, which was a safety concern. Genepax went bankrupt shortly after unveiling their model, even though they had received a patent on their water energy system.

Stanely Allen Meyer also invented a hydrogen-powered vehicle system which was patented. His idea implemented the use of “subjecting the collected gas mixture (extracted hydrogen and oxygen) to a pulsating, polar electric field whereby electrons of the gas atoms are distended in their orbital fields by reason of their subjection to electrical polar forces, at a frequency such that the pulsating electric field includes a resonance with respect to an electron of the gas atom.” Unfortunately, Stanely died in 1998 after a meeting with investors. According to his brother, Stanely said “they poisoned me,” then collapsed to the ground. You can read more of his patent here.

So what is different with NanoFlowcell’s design? For starters, it uses salt water! They have named their vehicle the Quant E-Sportlimosine and it has two tanks of liquid  with dissolved metallic salts. These dissolved salts have opposite charges and are then pumped through a membrane. The chemical reaction of uniting the two molecular structures gives off an energy that we can harness. This car has just been approved for testing on European roads, and it’s design  makes it look like it was made for those curvy roads. A sleek shape, and statistics that show 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds is an added bonus for something as beneficial to our planet as emission-free, non-hazardous transportation.

For more information on the Quant E-Sportlimosine, you can watch this video, and the following pictures show you what this beautiful creation looks like.