A car company in China claims it has built a vehicle that can travel up to 500km using water alone.

Vehicle is still a prototype

According to Nanyang Daily, the vehicle made its maiden journey on Wednesday, May 22, when local Communist Party chiefs visited the Youngman Automobile factory located in Nanyang, a city in Henan province.

The Youngman Automobile website was previously up, but appears to have gone down on May 28.

Pang Qingnian, CEO of Youngman Automobile, said the vehicle, which looks like a truck, simply needs 300 to 400 litres of water to run for 500km.

Any type of water can be used

He explained that the vehicle's engine runs on hydrogen produced by a chemical reaction when a catalyst is added to a mixture of aluminium powder and water.

He also said his company has kept the cost of making the engine low.

According to Global Times, Pang even claimed that any kind of water can be used, including sewage, and that clear, potable water will be produced in the process.

Staff from Nanyang Bureau of Industry and Information Technology told Xinhua News Agency that the vehicle is still a prototype.

Experts remain doubtful

News of the water-fuelled vehicle has drawn doubts from industry experts.

According to English-language state media CGTN, Wu Mengqiang, secretary general of China's National New Energy Alliance, said the catalyst can only change the reaction process, but is unable to provide any additional energy.

Guan Bin, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told The Cover the water-fuelled car is unlikely to be real.

He explained that these so-called water-fuelled cars are powered by hydrogen, and not water per se.

And the process requires a series of complicated chemical reactions, he said.

In addition, he claimed that such technology is more advanced in Japan as compared to China.

More energy needed than energy produced

Yuan Chen, a professor at the University of Sydney, told Caixin Global, it is impossible to create hydrogen from water without using an additional energy input.

And the energy needed to do that is greater than the hydrogen generated, he said.

Furthermore, while Pang claimed his company's water-fuelled car is "clean", Chen said the reaction between aluminium and water produces waste.

Not many Chinese netizens were impressed with the innovation too.

This liar's moral character is excellent!

Still, several netizens chose to give the company the benefit of the doubt.

Should this innovation succeed, those international luxury car brands will have to kneel down and beg us for the technology.

The real can't be faked. The fake can't become real. We just have to wait for what happens next.

According to Caixin Global, officials from the Nanyang local government later downplayed their support for the vehicle despite hailing it as an achievement when the company first made the announcement last week.

Company made similar claims in 2017

This is not the first time Youngman Automobile has made such a claim.

Back in 2017, the company claimed it created the world's first vehicle that runs on hydrogen.

As with its latest claim, the vehicle can supposedly travel 500km using water alone.

The company was also sanctioned by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in the same year for defrauding energy subsides, reported Caixin Global.

No mean feat

Water-fuelled cars have been a source of fascination for decades.

While many companies around the world claimed to have manufactured water-fuelled cars, their claims later turned out to be false.

According to tech news site Abacus News, to power a car with hydrogen, the vehicle would have to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

However, it is extremely difficult to split water molecules as they are very stable, which is the reason why there is abundant water on earth in the first place.

Top image via The Beijing News