GasWiz
"Save 30% of fuel costs! Improve your engine's power! Reduce your exhaust emissions by up to 70!"
Those are the claims made by the manufacturers of GasWiz.
I received an enquiry early this month about GasWiz and decided to add it to the devices worth investigating - especially in the light of claims above, which I struggle to describe with everyday adjectives.
Those claims are beyond staggering. Huge, extraordinary, unbelievable!
In fact, what do claims like that mean?
Let's break it down into simple numbers:
The world pumps 85 million barrels of oil a day. That is worth $8.5 billion a day (USD). Let's say half of it goes down the throats of internal combustion engines (a very low estimate, I'm sure!), giving a value per year of fuel of a whopping $1.5 trillion bucks a year. That's this many dollars: $1,500,000,000,000 annually, of which this device claims to be able to cut the cost by 30%.
That would make GasWiz worth a touch over 400 billion dollars, just on one year's turnover.
This was the stage when I decided there was little further point in doing more than pointing out the blindingly obvious on this one.
I'm leaving the blog-style earlier pieces to give some background to the position, but I do think this one requires little analysis.
Will they test? No.
Has there been any testing which shows results? No.
Are the claims new? No.
Does it work? No.
Again, I find myself up against a company who will not take up the offer of free testing by a responsible and respectable organisation - Auckland Uniservices.
A friend of mine uses the following signature line in correspondence:
Truth has nothing to fear from investigation.
Pretty apt.
Does your GasWiz contain health warnings?
The GasWiz supporters strike back!
I received an e mail yesterday (4th June 2008). It asked if I'd heard of the GasWiz, supplied by some crowd called Alt-Power - very trendy, 21st century name.
I hadn't, so checked and was immediately concerned to find that GasWiz:
1 Claims to save 30% on running costs and reduce emissions by 70%. These are eye-watering numbers and I would expect an extraordinary claim to have extraordinary proof and none was immediately visible.
2 Has not been properly evaluated by an independent study.
3 Had a previous incarnation in the period 1999-2000 when its inventor was the subject of Securities Commission warnings, prior to his company being wound up in Tauranga.
As of today - 9th June 2008 - I have heard from the Managing Director of Alt-Power stating that the company would very much like to participate in a scientific test of its GasWiz device!
That is great news and I look forward to posting the draft test protocol when I receive it from Alt-Power later this week.
He has also stated that the company is operating on a "good faith" style, hence the company's desire to have it properly tested*.
That sounds fair, but my investigation is ongoing and I will continue to record facts as I find them, hence, in the meantime, I record the following details: (to the links now above)
Update 16 June 2008
The opportunity to test has been declined.
Aside from this being no surprise, the interim period has revealed several highly interesting facets of the GasWiz/Alt-Power story.
Some very prominent New Zealanders' names are connected to the story and accordingly, I am making sure the words come from the horses' mouths.
Further details will be posted as soon as they are confirmed in writing by various parties.
Update 20th June 2008
I had been disturbed to find a couple of prominent Kiwi scientists linked to the GasWiz by a fairly tenuous thread, but one I wanted to check out thoroughly. I will not mention names as both parties have explicitly stated that they are not connected in any way, have no wish to be and believe it has no value whatsoever.
The current driving force behind GasWiz is also the failed promoter of a typical "fuel cell" device - one of those supposedly magical devices which enables one to extract hydrogen from water using virtually no energy. Unfortunately, as has been proven literally thousands of times so far, it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from water than is available from the hydrogen. Accordingly, seeking a fuel cell is the precise 21st century equivalent of turning lead into gold. The purported wonder device previously proposed by the chief of GasWiz/Alt-Power, like every one of its thousands of predecessors, failed utterly to work.
He claims that this one does though.
Yeah, right.
I think the evidence for GasWiz is pretty damn plain, actually. There is a saying in science that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Claiming a device which can reduce emissions by 70% and cut consumption by 30% goes beyond extraordinary, so I would expect to see some very heavy results of testing which backed those claims. Even Fuelstar can point to some research results. Badly flawed and inaccurate they certainly are, but GasWiz' claims are backed by nothing more than a few anecdotal stories. My Uncle Fred used to save fuel as well - he used to put lead weights into his petrol tank - he swore for his entire life that his car's petrol tank required less to fill it after he'd put the weights in! (Buy your lead weights here!)
Copyright © 2008 Immortality Ltd
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