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A brave new world
Tata funds research on making cars run on water

Bangalore, December 31
Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata's dream is to see cars run on water and he has invested $15 million in a start-up firm supporting research in the field, an eminent scientist said today.

The Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Prof C N R Rao, said one of his close friends and a professor in the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US has found a way to split water directly into hydrogen and oxygen.

“Ratan Tata has given him (the Professor) $15 million so that he (Tata) can own that company when it comes up,” Rao said.

“He (Tata) wants to invest in a company which will split water directly into hydrogen and oxygen,” Rao said, adding that after any kind of water — toilet water, rain water or sea water — was split to hydrogen and oxygen, these components could be used for energy.

“And a dream of Ratan Tata is eventually cars that will be run on water. My dream is also that,” he said, referring to a recent conversation he had with the Tata Group chairman.

Rao spoke on this initiative during a press conference convened by the Chemical Research Society of India to give details of the organisation's planned activities in 2011, a year which had been declared as the International Year of Chemistry by the United Nations. — PTI