To be a usefull fuel stuff has to be able to burn.
There is no chemical reaction that would release energy from water, as water is already a very stable molecule.
When you burn diesel or petrol one of the results is actually water. So running a car on water is like trying to run a campfire on ashes.
Vehicles with traditional engines use a chemical process called combustion to generate power.
They take a fuel molecule and react it with oxygen to release heat and generate pressure.
Now consider water – H2O. It already contains oxygen – it’s actually mostly oxygen by weight. It’s not combustible, it’s hydrogen that has already been combusted.
You can’t burn it again, so no more energy can be realistically extracted from a water molecule unless you have something much more dangerous than oxygen around to react it with.
Both diesel and petrol are combustible, which means that as a liquid they burn and as a gas they explode.
Car engines are called internal combustion engines (think explosion inside engine) because they take a fuel, like petrol, and make it to explode inside a small space.
When the fuel explodes it releases energy that moves parts of the engine and makes the wheels of the car turn.
Water isn’t combustible. It doesn’t burn or explode when it touches fire, so it won’t release energy, and won’t move the parts of the engine that turns the wheels.
Water cannot “burn” like traditional (fossil) fuels, but any hope of extracting energy from it at all, in some other way, can only be crushed by chemistry. A water molecule contains three atoms: an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, which bond together like magnets. Breaking those bonds will always take more energy than you get back. A water molecule is very stable. The energy needed to separate the atoms is greater than what you get back. Plus there’s a more volatile problem: hydrogen is dangerously flammable. Without the right safety measures, things can go kaboom very fats.
Explaining like you’re five:
Water is stubbornly lazy and doesnt want to change using it’s own energy.
It only changes into other things when something else helps. Such as electricity helping the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen break. Doing all the work.
Other fuels are full of energy and only either needs a little nudge to work (for petrol), or works well under pressure (with diesel). They then release all that stored energy (by burning), change into a different form with a lower energy state.
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