My bet - someone paid him a million or two to 'buy' his invention - and then locked it up forever. That should be classed as a gross crime against humanity, punishable by life in prison!
I’ve experimented with hydrogen.
The welder you describe uses electrolysis, to split the hydrogen and oxygen from each other. Problem is...it takes electricity to do this....and it is only 40% efficient.
The experiments I tried were to basically use spare battery power to create a small amount of hydrogen, and vent to the intake (hydrogen ‘boosting’)
I actually got worse gas mileage, since the O2 sensor sensed too much O2, and compensated by pulsing more fuel in.
This can by fixed by reprogramming the car’s computer...which I can’t do. There are commercial kits which do this. However, I can see problems with the water freezing in the winter; and, the plates used in the electrolysis (stainless steel) immediately have a coating form on them...which would have to be periodically scraped off.
All in all, not a great idea (hydrogen ‘boosting’).
And actually using water and battery power alone to power the car? Won’t get very far - alot like using a fan to power a windmill. So don’t worry, no conspiracy to be found.
One option experimented with in Japan is home fueling stations for hydrogen. Essentially something very similar to that welding box is converted to fuel up a hydrogen fuel cell...and this can be done in your garage. The problem comes back to the efficiency problems of using electricity to get hydrogen...and this is less economical than gasoline.
Thanks lacrew. There’s no way to extract hydrogen from water, then use it to put more pop into the gasoline, and raise gas mileage. Extra energy to recharge the battery was needed, and that extra energy came from the gasoline. And it’s a losing game both ways.
If someone came up with a way of using waste heat from the engine to extract the hydrogen, the mass budget (which of course would include lugging around the water) for that would be narrow; IOW, the extra weight from the equipment would have to make it worthwhile. And it probably wouldn’t.