Society complains incessantly about high motor-fuel prices, yet would rather drive its gas-guzzling SUVs to the corner store than walk.
And credulity increases in direct proportion to the consumer’s need to satiate his or her four-wheeled beast – and the rising cost of doing so. The tentative bonds of believability slip loose at the next fuel-savings delusion to come down the pike.
Useless gasoline-saving devices have been with us ever since the internal combustion engine was introduced as an inanimate mode of conveyance.
They fill a yearning for a fuel-saving nostrum and they play to a latent delusion that Big Oil is the corporeal manifestation of Satan – a conspiracy to squash any technology that could end its stranglehold on society’s pocketbook.
And they’ll be with us for as long as humans remain capable of believing ashes can be turned into gold.
According to Jay Robert Nash’s 1976 book Hustlers & Con Men, the septuagenarian American flim-flam man Louis Enricht paved the way for the enduring fuel-savings con.
In 1916, Enricht assembled a group of local reporters at his Long Island home and laboratory to announce starting news. “I have learned,” he told the press, “to do what chemists have been dreaming of for years.
“I have discovered, gentlemen, a substitute for gasoline that can be made for a penny a gallon.”
When the reporters voiced skepticism, the wily con artist led them to an automobile parked nearby, grabbed a yardstick, poked it into the gas tank and banged it loudly inside.
“Dry as a bone,” the old empiric said.
Picking up a garden hose, Enricht filled a pitcher, then held aloft a small vial that contained a bright green liquid and poured the contents into the water. He stirred the concoction, then poured it into the tank.
Enrich ushered two reporters into the car, drove them around town and returned them to the assemblage. The press, agog, scrambled back to their newspapers to write their stories, not knowing this investor-shearing “alchemist” had used a hidden gas tank.
More than half a century later, college pranksters played the same stunt – this time in Victoria.
The students invited the local news media to witness an amazing fuel additive in action. Upon the scribes’ arrival, the students filled the empty gas tank of a beater with water; then – with a flourish—dropped a pill in the tank.
This, they said, would turn the water into gasoline.
As if by a miracle, one of the students started the engine. The car slowly pulled away, lurching along as was the wont of small English-made autos of 1950s vintage. It travelled a short distance before spluttering to a halt.
Impressive, though the pill obviously needed some refining. But what was not so obvious was how some of the reporters were fooled. It did not occur to them to check the fuel line or glass bowl for residual gasoline.
When the proprietors of fuel-saving devices play to the fantasies of an unsuspecting public, however, they risk the attention of the law.
Last May, Edmonton-based PVI International Inc. lost its federal court appeal of a Competition Tribunal ruling that its claims about the efficacy of its fuel-saving device, the Platinum Vapour Injector (PVI), were false or misleading.
The 2002 federal tribunal decision followed a Competition Bureau investigation into allegations that the company and its owners engaged in deceptive marketing practices.
Prior to the tribunal ruling, PVI sold gas and diesel versions of the PVI through newspaper, radio and Internet ads that claimed the device – which injects small amounts of platinum into the engine – could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 22 per cent.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has seen hundreds of fuel devices based on hocus-pocus science.
There are the metallic fuel- line devices – gizmos such as the Moleculator – installed in the fuel line supposedly to cause “ionization” of the fuel. There are the magnetic fuel- line devices that purport to save fuel by “aligning” the fuel molecules.
And there are many others – the mixture enhancers, liquid injection systems and internal engine modifications – all based on junk, questionable or borderline science.
The promoters’ ads often are filled with testimonials. But in one case, a vehicle was found to have been given a tune-up when the device was installed. Some of these gizmos could compromise the manufacturer’s warranty, or cause harm to the engine.
Auto manufacturers have made tentative efforts to provide alternatives to gas- and diesel-driven vehicles, including creating battery-operated vehicles.
If consumers really want an alternative to fossil fuels, they should press the auto industry to look at a promising technology that became extinct seven decades ago: The steam-powered vehicle.
The most famous was the American-made Stanley Steamer, manufactured from about 1902 to 1927 by Stanley Motor Carriage Co. (another company purchased the family-owned business in 1917).
The steamer was simple, reliable, smooth-running and had incredible power, acceleration and speed. It needed only water and anything that could burn, such as kerosene or vegetable oils.
Stop-and-go city traffic was easy. The burner had little to do in such traffic, so would shut off, leaving the vehicle to feed off the residual steam from the boiler when the light turned green. Mileage actually was significantly better in city traffic.
But there were drawbacks. The driver needed a blowtorch to ignite the burner, and it would take up to half an hour to build a head of steam. Ultimately, it was the invention of the gasoline engine self-starter that sealed the steamers’ fate.
So who needs quackery to thwart Big Oil? Auto engineers should go back to the drawing board and see if they can overcome the technological hurdles of boiler-driven autos. Society has the ingenuity – it’s just a matter of imagination and will.
(Brock Ketcham can be reached at brock@businessedge.ca)
