The BIOS WaterCar Story

In October of 2008 Steve Schappert was a Green builder/developer. Featured on NBC's Going Green segment for 5 months and the featured speaker at a national real estate convention in Vegas. Schappert designed 50,000 sf of solar powered buildings and was pouring the foundation when the market collapsed. His investor took him to lunch on pay day and explained that he was not getting paid his monthly GC fee and he was going to loose his life savings which was the $1,300,000 equity he had in the first project. Schappert was left with $140 and 2 used cars, no health insurance, unemployment checks or savings.

Spending nearly 2 years barely surviving as a home painter Schappert finally pulled the blue tarp off his 72 Mustang in May of 2010 and was faced with 3 choices. Live in the car, sell the car for $1000 or install a hydrogen system in it and drive it cross country to get exposure for his green living concept called BIOS. Schappert threw the third option out on Facebook and one of the founders of MTV's Rap channel called and said, "That's a great F'n idea, a green road trip". Alexandra Bruce started working on budgets and lining up a production team and Steve put his team together for the car.

People came out of the woodwork to help, starting with minor things like drilling lock sets, cleaning up the car, minor repairs to get it running and welding new floor pans. Schappert also contacted one of the larger manufacturers of hydrogen generators and asked them to donate a unit for the road trip. The manufacturer agreed.

Schappert and friends threw a party called GreenFest featuring 23 bands from 5 states and as far away as Beirut Lebanon. The installation was filmed and a music video was taped. On June 23rd the trip began with Schappert and copilot and mechanic Steve Melycher. The first stop was ABC news in New Haven CT where 7 TV spots were filmed, 4 live and 3 for the evening news. The next day they were featured on ABC in Maryland.

Unfortunately the system did not work and numerous calls to the manufacturer resulted in no return phone calls for the first 10 days of the trip. Fortunately Kevin West called and asked us to stop by, he had a present for us. We ripped the first system out and installed Kevin's system over the coarse of 3 days at a salvage yard in Oregon. The system showed an immediate 17% increase. Upon returning home to CT Schappert pushed the limits of the system until things smoked and glowed and welded things together. Without hesitation or discouragement Schappert, pulled it apart, built it back stronger and reinstalled it.

The first system used an electrolyte (sodium hydroxide) fairly caustic and not easy to use, Schappert and Melycher both received burns while adding the lye to the water. The second system used brute force from the alternator. Schappert decided to try both as an experiment and found that 3 teaspoons of lye gave him a 38% increase. The second time out Schappert removed the resistors and 60 amp gauge and pulsed 90 amps at 12 volts into tap water, producing a 57.6% increase. The base gas mileage of the car was 17 and over 60.3 miles it used 2.25 gallons for an average mpg of 26.8.

The best part of the story is how much help has been received. I am putting together another page to credit everyone but for now lets just say countless people worked on the car to help the project. Many people took us in to their homes, feed us and gave us gas money. Nearly $3000 showed up in our pay pal account while we were driving to cover gas, lodging and various car parts. Upon arriving back in CT a lunch lead to the car being repainted by a sponsor that has offered $100,000 in the next year to cover parts and technology for the project. Several event coordinators have offered approximately $50,000 in advertising sponsorships. Several venture capitalists have stepped forward to see how they can assist as well.

Never say die...

The car broke down on the side of the road 4 times on the way to Florida, fuel pump blew up in the parking lot at AutoZone. So many times it would have been easy to pack up and call it a day, but we kept moving forward. By the time we got to Oregon the car was running so well, we drove almost nonstop from Oregon to CT in 2 days. The analogy is waking up a patient that has been in a coma for 4 years and within 2 months having home run across America over 3 weeks and then finish with a 2900 mile wind sprint.

We promise nothing, we are selling nothing, this is an experiment and if it interests you feel free to join in the adventure, the story has just begun...