RX8Club.com - Return of the Steam Engine?

so, from what very very very very VERY little information i can glean from the yahoo article, it's some sort of water injection system, playing the same role as the system in my dream hydrogen powered RENESIS (ie: absorbs heat -> becomes steam -> steam drives rotor -> increases thermal efficiency by converting heat energy to mechanical energy)...

but, here are some of those "miracle" claims which may be the slightest bit true, or even flat out lies...

Quote:

Originally Posted by biz.yahoo.com
USIS can be applied to all fixed and mobile platforms that use internal combustion engines. USIS Group's gasoline and diesel prototype vehicles have not needed extensive modification to run with USIS in place. In the modified engines, steam is inducted during combustion, allowing the vehicles to run leaner mixtures of fuel and oxygen and cooling the combustion process. The continuous flow of steam through the engine keeps cylinders and pistons clean and helps prevent "pinging" by cleaning carbon deposits. The higher exhaust oxygen content produces fewer NOX and CO2 emissions; a plume of steam from the exhaust pipes is the only evidence of the vehicles' alteration.

i checked out the company website to see if there's any real information there, and the dyno graphs seem a little funny (tons of torque increase while the power is constantly better through the same rpm on the other car??), the emissions testing seems legit, the fuel consumption numbers are extremely suspect as they compare their "modified car" to a "standard car". it also appears that the Yahoo "article" is made of about half of the "Information" section of the site.

apparently the modified car is a Nissan Skyline RB, and doesn't have a catalytic converter?? ah, ok... the "pics" section gives a little more insight into how the system works: here
it seems to be a very similar concept to the water-injection systems which some turbo'd cars use when they can't get the turbocharging done efficiently enough and need to control heat, but just way way bigger.
the system injects a ton of water into the air+fuel charge, and the motor then leans out the fuel to unbelievable levels, with the water there to clean up the mess and control EGT's so the piston rings don't melt and fuse themselves with the block.

does it seem legit-ish?? yeah... but i'm still very suspicious of any product which makes miracle claims, and it's not from a big company with a really big budget and lots of real numbers (not excel-drawn graphs) to back it up.