About voodoo and homeopathy in the car: fuel saving magic!

Voodoo for the car. The first time I came across any Nepp products for cars was over 10 years ago, even in real life! In the past I worked for a company that operated a large fleet of vehicles. In order to reduce the costs of the fleet, the idea came to the table of equipping the vehicles with magnets on the hoses in the engine compartment. These magnets should ensure better combustion.

In fact, the managing director of a company even showed up at the time, telling us about the effectiveness of various magnetic rings for cars with miracle certificates and some diagrams. These would only have to be attached close to the engine on the intake tract and injection lines. A vehicle was even prepared on site for demonstration purposes, which everyone was then allowed to drive to see for themselves.

The result was exciting: the three small parts that were installed in the engine compartment of one of the cars in the company's fleet seemed to work wonders! Not only should fuel consumption be reduced, but the engine should generally run better and also produce more power. And that's exactly what all my colleagues (sic) "confirmed" who took a ride with the company's managing director in the modified car. I will explain why this is so in the course of the article.

In the end, a cost estimate with a 5-figure sum ended up on the table. I leave it open whether these voodoo parts for the car were ever purchased. But you can generally make a lot of money with these things (at least for those who SELL them), to this day!

Magnets and other magic on the car!

My experience with the miracle cures was many years ago now and I didn't know Mimikama at the time. In this respect, it was a difficult internal struggle to be able to explain these magnetic things as voodoo for the car.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

However, all these many years later, I have to realize that there are still a number of magical devices on the market today that promise reduced fuel consumption, greater efficiency or more performance without requiring any significant intervention. And the “magnetic ring”, whatever name it is sold under, will continue to be sold.

Whether magnets or rings, what they all have in common is that they can be easily installed on the car. They are installed outside of a motor and therefore do not access it. No, these parts are supposed to work differently. These devices are designed to align molecules so that they are burned more efficiently. Magnetic vibrations would supposedly affect the fuel on a molecular basis. According to different statements, this can be directly at the fuel pump or just before the engine during injection.

In nice little animated graphics you can see air and fuel molecules being sorted into ranks like little armies by the magnets ( see here ). So if these small molecule soldiers march into the engine in an orderly manner, they should be burned better. That's obviously the logic.

Chemically speaking, nonsense!

But from the perspective of chemistry glasses, absolute nonsense! First of all, far away from the classic combustion engine in the car: In principle, molecules can be influenced by magnets. Especially molecules that are magnetic or paramagnetic in some way.

These molecules are then pushed or repelled by the pole of a magnet. Oxygen is actually paramagnetic and, in liquid form, can be influenced by magnets. BUT only in the liquid state (very, very cold, minus 183 degrees C)!

However, this is not possible in its natural state, i.e. gas. Due to the strong mobility of the particles, we would need immensely strong magnets to manipulate gaseous oxygen. This magnetic field would have to be far stronger than the strongest magnetic field generated to date. There are certainly repeated attempts to influence oxygen with magnets.

But none of this has anything to do with the order or regularity of the molecules . Even if the magnet were so strong that it could influence gaseous oxygen, it would not result in order. In the best case, the magnet would inhibit the flow rate of oxygen in the air supply, meaning the oxygen would arrive in the engine a few milliseconds later than planned. Besides, gaseous molecules do whatever they want anyway.

Even if we assume that the magnet is strong enough to influence gaseous oxygen (which is not possible), the molecules would simply do what they want again .

Now also take a look at the air that flows into the engine, because we are not talking about pure oxygen here. A draft from our atmosphere is typically 21% oxygen and a whopping 78% nitrogen. The lovely nitrogen molecules are not at all interested in the magnets because they not paramagnetic . They basically “beat” the oxygen molecules with all their energy and ensure that they also stay in motion.

Ergo: Classic “air”, which is needed for combustion in an internal combustion engine, cannot be ordered, as the diagrams of various magnetic rings show us. But what about the fuel? Can it be organized using magnetic rings so that it can be burned better?

The fuel for typical gasoline or diesel engines is always a mixture of hydrocarbons of different lengths. These are usually not paramagnetic, meaning they cannot be influenced by magnets. This means they remain unaffected when passing through these magnetic clamps. So: magnets don't help at all! But let's give it a second chance:

After fuel delivery we come to injection, this is where things get really interesting. The aim of injection is to distribute the fuel and air (with oxygen) as finely as possible. If possible, a maximum contact area between air and fuel is created. An even distribution is certainly an advantage in terms of reaction technology.

This is usually achieved through extreme pressure, fine atomization and then strong compression by the pistons before the explosive atmosphere in the cylinder is detonated by a spark plug or self-ignition. No matter in which order our molecules arrive at the injection system, at this point at the latest it is over, over, over before the actual combustion. Here everything is massively mixed up and distributed as finely as possible. The molecules are not arranged in relation to each other either before or during the injection, as all particles are uncharged.

Only when ignition occurs are the bonds within the molecules broken and reformed. Ergo: even IF even a single molecule was ordered before the injection (which is not possible in this form), everything will be swirled again at the latest during the “Hurrah, off into the piston” injection.

Even more voodoo for the car!

But we can find other products for cars on the market that promise vehicle efficiency and lower fuel consumption. This is not about the influence on molecules, but on the electronics of a vehicle. We're talking about small plugs that supposedly work wonders; more precisely, we're talking about so-called OBD2 plug-in modules, which are often offered on the Internet.

These are usually small white connectors with a colorful cap that are intended to be plugged into the connector for a vehicle's diagnostic system. Supposedly these would carry out a “remapping” and feed the control unit with new data. This small plug is placed on the OBD port of every vehicle.

Vehicles have had this OBD connection for a good two decades now. This means that the workshop can read which errors the on-board computer reports. At the same time, a vehicle's system can also be accessed.

That sounds good so far and in fact, not only can diagnosis be made via this interface, but the vehicle can also be accessed. Now comes the big BUT, because these little plugs that are available on all sorts of sales platforms on the Internet just can't do that. Even if they claim that.

Broken down so simply that individual circuit boards communicate with a control unit in the car and optimize it accordingly (also continuously) is, in many ways, complete nonsense. Because every combustion engine is provided with certain settings by the manufacturer at the factory. This also means that different engines have different injection times and optimizations.

However, the small connectors give the impression that they can optimize any engine by simply plugging them in. That would assume that all engines are set up the same, and that is not the case. But Christof Windeck from c`t magazine recently made it clear that these little plugs and their colorful glowing diodes are complete nonsense.

In his article “ Saving gasoline: rip-offs with flashing fuel-saving plugs ,” Windeck took a closer look at these small parts and also examined what exactly is supposed to be going on. The result of the article: These OBD-2 plugs can do absolutely nothing except flash colorfully. And that is probably intended, because indiscriminate intervention in the control units could ultimately lead to fatal engine damage. Apart from the fact that the manufacturer's warranty expires immediately as soon as such an intervention actually works.

One of the plugs takes the fraud to the extreme: none of the data lines are connected to it and there is no chip that could communicate. Instead, two LEDs light up permanently and the middle one flashes in the same rhythm.

„Save petrol: rip-off with flashing fuel saver plugs“

At this point I recommend reading the article by Christof Windeck .

Hocus pocus and mind games

How do I make some mumbo-jumbo work for users? Very simple: I create an appropriate mindset. I mentally attune people to the equipment I sell to them. To take up the behavior of my ex-colleagues from the beginning of the article: They simply allowed themselves to be manipulated and had a perceived effect. This effect was reinforced by the selling manager talking to them during the test drive.

However, there is not always a person present who can make a product tasty. Normally, many of these useless car products have other psychological effects. One of the recurring tricks is to state that a measurable effect would only occur after some time.

We read that it would take a few tank fillings for the engine to adjust to the new environment or for the chips to have any effect. This is usually fake nonsense. An engine or a car is not a person who has to get used to something. A change in combustion essentially takes place immediately and not only after 1,000 or 2,000 kilometers have been driven.

But what does that mean? It is simply occupational therapy and a way of influencing driving behavior. We are dealing with a form of the placebo effect. Anyone who buys such a product and believes in it unconsciously changes their driving behavior in the direction of the product's promise of effectiveness. So I adjust my expectations. And the more time I get to do it, the bigger the adjustment. Expressed anecdotally, this means: “Oh, look, I’ve now driven 300 km with this thing and the effect is starting to set in.”

In this respect, one could actually say that all of these things work in some form. Because they influence driving behavior, even if not in the way advertised. At least that's what you can admit at this point with a smile on your face.

But what helps now?

Let's move away from voodoo and snake poison for the car. Of course there are ways to reduce fuel consumption. The fleet of the company I worked for at the time, which tended to use miracle cures, could also have taken other, and above all, logical paths. I don't have to invest any money in any aids; the opposite is the case: I save money completely by simply adjusting my driving behavior.

Anticipatory driving, no unnecessary speeding, no unnecessary running of the engine, reducing speeds and coasting early on, no rushing off, no unnecessary consumers while driving. No unnecessary trips or pleasure trips. Maybe consider carpooling. These are all things that are not new and as a whole they work. Driving training is much more efficient than all the miracle cures taken together!

In the private environment, other aspects come into play. I save the most fuel when I don't even move the car. So it's about changing the way you think in your head too. How far can I walk or use existing public networks without having to move my car? I have to decide with myself whether a journey of one or two kilometers is necessary or whether I should allow myself 20 minutes more time for a journey and cover it on foot. Or by bike, because a bike is the ideal choice for short journeys in terms of time and speed.

But in the end each person has to decide for themselves. A walk costs me nothing. Completely without magnetic rings or plug-in modules.

This might also be of interest : Take a look at our Greenkama category !

Also a personal recommendation: The grass sucker - This is how we get gas cheaper