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Trevor Hunter from HHOTec has been posting a lot of comments this week to my blog-post on his nonsense Platinum Fuel Saver - his comments have become so so frequent, repetitive and long that I have stopped approving them as they are becoming spam.

However Trevor has the right to reply to what I say about him, but rather than allow him to fill my blog with thousands of words all designed to draw your attention away from my point (that the product does not work and that Trevor has no proof that it does work) I am instead moving his comments, breaking them down into points and responding to them.

The magazine test:
Trevor starts by pointing to a test carried out by some one I have never heard of, in a magazine I have never heard of, using a test method which is not disclosed which found his Platinum Injection System to be 10% effective.

This is not by any means to be considered proof. We have no way of knowing if the test was fair or if the person who carried out the test was impartial. Also a 10% increase in mileage is well within the margin of error on any “real world” experiment where many other factors can have caused the difference.

Why I won’t test his product:
Trevor repeatedly says that I don’t know what I am talking about because I have never tested any of the products I criticise. I have explained many times that I don’t need to test them to know they are nonsense, these are four main reasons for this:

• Engines burn upwards of 98% of their fuel, so even if any of these systems did work then the gain would be 1% or 2% at most.
• I am not making any claim here, they are. I’m not claiming to make a product which does anything, they are. They are the ones who need to prove the system does work, not me to prove it does not.
• It is very difficult to convincingly prove a negative. However for these guys to prove a positive ought to be very easy, so why don’t they do it?
• If i did carry out a test and concluded that the product did not work do you think they would say “fair enough” or do you think they would say there was something wrong with my test?

How any test has been made invalid anyway:
Trevor says that road harmonics (road vibrations) are required to make the system work properly, so this makes any lab test invalid, how convenient.

Any test outside of a lab is meaningless because you loose control of other factors which may affect the results, any test in a lab is meaningless because Trevor says there is a factor you are not accounting for.

Trevor likes to point out that if you fit one of this Platinum Injection System that you may no notice the difference for 2000 miles. This makes also any lab test impossible due to cost.

Other than making lab tests invalid I see no reason why HHOTec would make these claims or what science would back up the claims that you need to run the test for at least 2000 miles on a real road.

Fuel and engine efficiency:
Trevor says that engines do not burn upwards of 98% of their fuel and I am wrong to say that they do. However Trevor is wrong about this, engines do burn almost all their fuel. Any remaining unburned hydrocarbons are dealt with at the catalytic converter (this is what it is for) and if there were more than a few percent of unburned fuel in the exhaust gasses then the catalytic converter would quickly overheat and burn out.

Trevor says that engines burn only around 68% of their fuel, however this is not true. True to say that internal combustion engines are only something like 60% efficient, the other 40% of the energy being lost to heat and sound, but this is not that same as the engine only burning 60% of its fuel. Engine energy efficiency is not the same as percentage of fuel burned.

Court judgement:
Trevor likes to point to some court case to do with a Platinum Fuel Saver and a statement from a Federal Judge, Walter J. Skinner. An unverified and context free copy of the judge’s statement can be seen on Trevor’s site.

I have little idea of who this judge is or what he is talking about or what is qualifications are or if he even said that stuff. I can also find no reference to this anywhere on the Internet other than Trevor’s own web site and other similar websites.

Satisfied customers and no complaints:
Trevor points to his thousands of satisfied customers and no complaints as evidence that his system works… even if this is true, and I doubt that it is, this is still not proof that the system works, it is only anecdotal evidence.

Other Media:
On his website Trevor cites several news reports (I can’t find the Wall Street Journal or the Motor Trend articles) about his product.

There is a Forbes article on the HHOTec site, a USA Today article and an identical International Business Times article elsewhere on the Internet.  However they all appear to be nothing more that regurgitations of HHOTec press releases rather than actual journalism or evidence of any kind.

The bottom line:
Trevor says his product will add about 22% more to your vehicles MPG. However where here is this extra energy coming from? If his product worked, and I see no evidence that it does, then you would expect to see an increase in MPG of no more that 2% because that is all the extra energy available from unburned fuel.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, so why are we offered no proof at all?

I am not going to approve any more of Trevor or his friends comments on my blog unless they:

• Clarify any of the points I raze.
• Provide real scientific proof.
• Explain where this extra 22% of energy is coming from.

At the moment they are busy threatening to give my book bad reviews on Amazon (seriously!) and desperately doing anything to avoid addressing these three points. With threats like that I’m obviously getting to him and just what kind of guy he is is coming over nicely. He has even added a page to his own site about me where he makes the logical error of confusing “ignorance” with rational scepticism.

Don’t just take my word for it:

• For another professional engineer’s opinion on this subject.
• See if you can find anything positive on the EPA website at www.epa.gov on this “technology”, I know I can’t.
• EPA report on the Platinum Gasaver and their 2006 failure to submit data here.
• Read what the FTC has to say on fuel savers.