It’s no wonder he’s been given the bird by governments and oil companies alike, but Hydrotechnix owner Richard Bird is not surprised. His latest invention has him truly believing that, in years to come, engines will be capable of running on bottled water, alone.
Find that hard to swallow? He’s a fair amount of the way there already and claims that his latest invention is not only friendlier to the environment than petrol and diesel equivalents, but also that his product is also more powerful, to boot. And whereas he has interests from local businesses already, looking to reduce costs with the backdrop of runaway oil prices affecting traditional fuel in the future, just think how much this type of fuel will drive down the cost of your van insurance!
A commercial vehicle being able to run on a non-combustible product – how could they not give cheaper van insurance quotes for that? Third party fire and theft policies could become a thing of the past. If the only by-product of the envisaged fuel is steam, and commercial drivers having the privilege of smoking taken away from them, how on earth could their vehicle be set alight, if other than on purpose?
You can understand why governments and oil companies would be against this shift in the market. The establishment would lose billions of pounds per annum in taxes. The oil magnates from the Middle East or Russia would see their share values plummet overnight.
And to prove that the theory of cheaper van insurance is a reality rather than a pipe dream, Lloyds of London have already underwritten any liability insurance for the invention. Not stopping there, Richard has also obtained the blessing of the TUV which will more or less guarantee its market acceptance, should the demand prove enough or a successful bidder come in to buy the rights from him. As you can imagine, he has already had encouraging interest from local end users who would convert, but the resistance of Government and further backing by the power industry has him holding back on which way to go next.
What is HHO?
The product Richard has developed thus far is not yet the fuel that would eliminate combustibles completely, so we are not yet at the stage to go to our brokers automatically demanding cheap van insurance if we were able to convert to this fuel, now.
Rather, it is based around the Hydrogen fuel cell, which only has ten percent of your standard fuel emission engine, partly derived from the fact that it only uses half of the fuel. Conversely, it has thrice the power of standard liquid fuels, thus fully igniting and subsequently burning all of the fuel entering the engine.
This leads to further improvements in efficiency utilising all of the residue; whilst existing fuel engines only part-burn the fuel, the steam produced from burning HHO keeps the engine cleaner than its rival.
On the face of it, the benefits are many, not only for cheaper van insurance but for the planet, also, enabling us to hold on to our natural reserves whilst utilising less fuel. Let’s just hope someone grows a pair and helps instigate this groundbreaking way of driving our engines, saving us all a few quid, as well as the planet.