Electric Vehicle Chemistry

Chemical reactions that release energy are called “exothermic.” For example, take the combustion of methane, where we have: CH4 + 2O2 –> CO2 + 2H2O + energy. The energy is then used to cook our food, power our vehicles, or whatever we choose.

It’s useful to know where the energy came from, since it can’t arise spontaneously; as we recall, energy is conserved.  It’s never created nor destroyed; it simply changes forms. The energy in most of our methane came from the sun via photosynthesis, where organic molecules with lots of chemical energy content were formed that were then consumed as food by animals that lived on Earth many millions of years ago, whose decay after death left us with enormous quantities of so-called “fossil fuels.”

I bring this up to shed light on this video featuring a car that ostensibly runs on a combination of aluminum, water, and air. Rather than simply declaring this a fraud, I turn it over to you. Can you write a working (exothermic) chemical reaction that has any combination of Al, H2O, O2, Co2, N2 (ingredients in air) on the left hand side, i.e., as reactants?

Best of luck.