Water as a fuel source? How could it be efficient?

Question

This guy tries to say that it takes less energy to convert water to Hydrogen and Oxygen gasses than the energy produced by recombining them. This can't be true. There are ways now of getting rid of all energy wastes like friction, sound, heat and inertia. So if this statement was true, we could have perpetual energy, which is thought to be impossible. That would be like having a motor turn a generator which powers the motor, and expecting it to run forever. What do you think?

http://www.lilybrookherefords.com/stef/waterasfuel.htm

Holy hell that guy was nuts!

Answer 1

Well no, it isn't true. It's a webpage from a random nutcase. The internet is full of them. this one isn't even very entertaining.

If you are going to waste your time reading the webpages of psuedoscientific loonies (as I often do) you should at least look for the entertaining ones.

I recommend the site below.

Answer 2

This is a case of pure power politics. We could've had hydrogen as a safe, natural fuel source earlier, but the powers that be (our government and the big three auto makers) are against it until we have no more access to fossil fuels. That way they can continue to make big profits by exploiting that knowledge and keeping it an "impossibility." The only by product of hydrogen fuel is H2O. The cars will not be all hydrogen driven, however, as hydro-electric needs to be explored first before they can change over to fulltime hydrogen fuels. By the time they save us money in fuel, we won't be able to afford the cars.

Answer 3

It is certainly not possible to have energy left over after splitting water into its component parts, Hydrogen and Oxygen. If you are talking about purely Perpetual Motion", please discard that idea because it is a paradox.
However, if you were to use solar energy or other "natural" energy to split the water into its component parts and use the energy efficiently, then you would subsequently have "free energy" after you have built the infrastructure.