Apparently it is onboard hydrogen generation that consumes metals as fuel. The energy source would seem to be the consumed metals, which would make this different from simply trying to use energy to split water.
A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an Israeli company.
The Hydrogen car Engineuity is working on will use metals such as Magnesium or Aluminum which will come in the form of a long coil. The tip of the metal coil is inserted into the Metal-Steam combustor together with water where it will be heated to very high temperatures. The metal atoms will bond to the Oxygen from the water, creating metal oxide. As a result, the Hydrogen molecules are free, and will be sent into the engine alongside the steam.
The vehicle will contain a mechanism for rolling the metal wire into a coil during the process of fuelling and the spent metal oxide, which was produced in the previous phase, will be collected from the car by vacuum suction.
I read an article about something similar... let me see if I can find it...here it is
But it looks like with this they are just using electricity to split the H2O, and the Al to remove the O.
Anyway cool stuff, thanks for posting that. I've also read that HHO can be made from steam (with a fancy platinum thing) with high ef. If I had lost of money, time and a machine shop I'd be playing around with that right now .
Aluminum / potassium hydroxide generators have been around. "Production from an aluminum pull-tab lasts 40 minutes". Try Google :
(aluminum potassium hydroxide hydrogen generator)