Jia Wei Liew’s recent blog discussed the new innovation of a “salt water car”. He mentioned how this innovation could be a “Tesla Killer”, and is extremely innovative. However, there are many flaws in this argument. First of all, contrary to what Jia said, salt water is not an unlimited resource; in fact not many resources on earth, if any, are unlimited. Scarcity is what shapes much of the modern world, and is the backbone of economic theory. Even more important to note is that this car doesn’t, in fact, run on salt water. Does it run on a salty liquid? Yes, however it is actually a man-made liquid similar to an electrolyte compound.

One of the main issues I’ve found with this is the ability for consumers to access such a form of petroleum. Unlike Tesla, which runs on electricity by way of plug-in, this car needs this electrolyte substance in order to run. Unless this kind of car rapidly increases in popularity, which is hard to imagine being priced at $1 million, it will be extremely difficult and expensive to make this fuel easily accessible to consumers. The costs involved in making such a product easily accessible to the consumers are overwhelming, and exponentially bigger than those of Tesla’s supercharger stations.

Other sources:

http://www.intelligentliving.co/salt-water-powered-car-gets-european-approval/

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Albrecht/2014-03-06-Flow-Cell-Batteries-A-Substitute-For-Lithium-Ion.html