Explaining Why The Radio Powered Electric Car Is Nonsense

Sungulani Maxwell Chikumbutso, known for his “inventions” such as EVs that don’t require charging and a radio powered TV, is making the rounds again. This time with another no-charge EV powered on radio waves that earned him a visit to our state house.

Of course this is nonsense. I don’t want to spend too much time debunking this since I have better things to do but this is the main issue:

Radio waves have less energy than visible light.

Yes, you can harvest electricity from radio waves. That’s how RFIDs work. Problem is that’s way less energy than you can get from visible light.

To make this point clearer, I saw another video of a car on sale here in Zimbabwe with a solar panel, the Derry M7.

Problem is that it’s only 300W which will give you about 2.5kWh in a day, a third of the 200km range at best¹. Not nothing, but the point is that radio waves with less energy wouldn’t get you as much, let alone “no charging”.

It’s annoying how a lot of places which mention how the car “works” feature the electromagnetic spectrum graph and don’t bother to look at what it means for using radio waves to power cars..

Second reason is that his marketing is incoherent. For instance, the car is “very light at 1400kg”―that’s not light at all. My fat ass driving a Mazda Demio barely cracks 1000kg.

All the other claims are testable which the people both at the event and journalists reporting on this should been able to do, such as it being self driving, unlimited range and going 0‒100km/h in 2 seconds.

Was about to critisize the kW/hp conversions he made but the 160kW does equal 215HP so that’s correct. Issue was the website which mentions another car.

Third reason is that it’s just a rebadged EV―the X3 Pro Ev Kaiyi to be specific. I was trying to find the original car model but then I saw him mention that he partnered with Kaiyi to make the car which narrowed my search down a lot.

Thing is, it seems to be a great car in it’s own right, why did he have to add all this free energy stuff? I doubt it would be cheap but it would be nice to see in Zimbabwe. I can’t see anything on it having VTG (vehicle-to-grid, powering things using the cars battery) but that would make it even better.

I’m annoyed. Ever since I was in high school this nonsense comes up once in a while and a lot of people fall for it. Ya’ll are better than this. Then again, we’ve had the whole “diesel from a rock” thing in 2005 and we fell for it then so maybe not.

I would go in more detail but I’ve spent more time than I’ve wanted to on this and I want to do something else. If this guy pops up in the news again I’ll do a proper debunking.

Related Reading

• Self-Powered TV: BUSTED!!! by Thunderf00t [VIDEO 26:17] is a thorough debunking of Chikumbutso’s previous “work”
• SCAM ALERT: ‘Poisoned’ Maxwell Chikumbutso Avoids Other Inventors And Spends 8 Years Secretly Meeting Mnangagwa Who Fooled Army Saying He’s Been Poisoned By Bob. I didn’t know that you can pay journalists to find dirt on people. Anyway, this paper tried to verify Chikumbutso’s claims and they’re complete nonsense.
• William Sachiti from the Academy of Robotics is a UK-based Zimbabwean who actually making a self-driving car. Crazy how they announced things around the same time and yet Sungulani gets more attention. Figures, maybe I should actually write about him instead?