It is tempting to want to believe some inventor who claims to have discovered a source of “free energy”. We would all like to have energy without cost. It could turn our lives into a paradise. But the problem is that there is no “free lunch”!
While we live in this universe, with its physical laws, we will always need to find some form of stored energy that is available to do useful work. That might be burning coal to create heat and turn a turbine to generate electricity. Or use solar panels and store energy in a battery for later use.
But each case requires either the fuel source has a preexisting store of energy already, like in coal and petroleum, or that we invent a method of harvesting energy like with a solar panel. In the former case the stored energy in the coal has a high energy density and only needs to be released by burning it. In the latter case the stored energy in the solar photons received by the crystals in the solar panel have sufficient energy density to generate enough electric voltage so that electric energy may be stored in a battery.
The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics tell us that we cannot get any “free lunch”. There is always a cost. Even for the providentially Creator provided hydrocarbon fuels, coal, natural gas and petroleum, there is a cost of extracting them from the rocks. But those forms of energy are already in a thermodynamic state that the fuels naturally want to release the available energy for work to be done. Just burn the fuel and produce heat to make electricity. However there will always be fraud when someone claims to be able to get energy for nothing.
The write up on a YouTube video from Africa Today with the headline “Africa’s Energy Secret: The Unlimited Range Car Big Oil Doesn’t Want You To See” stated:
In a world-changing event on February 10th, 2025, Zimbabwean inventor Maxwell Chikumbutso unveiled what experts called impossible: a car that never needs fuel or charging. Built with revolutionary microsonic energy technology, the Saith EV is set to transform the future of transportation forever.
That video showed a “product launch” of Zimbabwean inventor Maxwell Chikumbutso’s new car, which apparently has a device hidden in it that harvests radio-frequency energy from the environment to power the China-built EV.
On video the inventor explained that the technique used is a trade secret and therefore had to be protected by including an explosive device in the box housing the free energy circuit. If anyone tampers with the circuit the explosive detonates and destroys the device. He said that because the patent office would not grant a patent he had to do this.
Well, if you believe these claims I have a bridge to sell you. Not to be too crass but anyone who believes it is an utterly foolish or senseless person.
Techzim did a review of his claims and published that January 28, 2025, prior to Chikumbutso’s “product launch”. Their article is titled “Science And The Problem With Chikumbutso’s “Free Energy” Claims“.
Zimbabwe’s Sungulani Maxwell Chikumbutso recently demonstrated what he claims to be revolutionary energy technology to President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The demonstration featured an electric vehicle, reportedly a modified Chinese-manufactured car available on Alibaba, which Chikumbutso claims can run indefinitely without charging through his “Microsonic energy device.” This device, he says, converts radio frequencies into usable energy.
Chikumbutso’s claims have shifted over time. In 2013, he initially stated his device generated power “from air.” Now, he describes it as harnessing radio frequencies for energy production. He has said this technology can power various vehicles, including cars, helicopters, and bikes.
Chikumbutso acknowledges his invention allegedly violates fundamental laws of physics, specifically the laws of thermodynamics. When attempting to patent the technology, he reports being rejected on the grounds that it violated natural physical laws and lacked industrial applicability. Rather than addressing these scientific concerns, he says he opted to treat the technology as a trade secret. (my emphasis added)
It certainly does violate all known physics. There is no “free lunch”!
Radio-waves are electromagnetic waves that permeate the environment. They are the radiofrequency (RF) energy used to transmit radio and TV signals. In the environment they have extremely low energy density and cannot power anything except some extremely low energy circuits. For that reason a radio or TV needs an external energy source to power its circuits. Those circuits contain a RF amplifier used to boost the signals so you can see or hear them.
This Zimbabwean guy, Chikumbutso, is another in a long line of snake oil salesmen and he has been at the same scam since at least 2003. His February 10th, 2025 “product launch” is not his first rodeo.
I normally do not publish anything from Snopes but I found Alex Kasprak’s review of Chikumbutso’s claims to be very helpful. That report was published May 31, 2018 and updated June 1, 2018 titled “Did a Man from Zimbabwe Invent an Electric Car That Requires No Charging?” with subtext “The Internet is full of dubious claims regarding a genius Zimbabwean inventor, but nobody has ever actually seen his technology work.”
Needless to say that the Fact Check proved the claims to be false. The main reason was that no actual evidence of a device that generates net power was ever presented. And it didn’t start in 2018 or 2015 but goes way back further.
In 2003, Maxwell began to get ideas on creating a self-powered generator. Through [patent lawyer Bruce Mujeyi], Maxwell interfaced with some prominent professors in Zimbabwe who told him that it was impossible to create such a machine.
But you might give Chikumbutso the benefit of the doubt, that he was just confused or misunderstood. No way! Fraud has to be involved. It was and always will be a con job.
I don’t know how Chikumbutso expects to get away with it.
Since the most well established law of physics — the Second Law of Thermodynamics — is being violated you would need to explain how and where the usable energy comes from. Also the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy must come from somewhere, you cannot get “free energy” from nowhere.
But the Second Law is right in your face. It requires that the energy you claim to harvest must be in a thermodynamic state that makes it usable. Read Thermodynamics and Creation: A Scientific Perspectives!
Imagine a ball at the top of a hill. It has stored potential energy and if released it will roll down the hill under the Earth’s gravitational field releasing that potential energy converting it to energy of motion, kinetic energy. The First Law conserves that energy as it is converted to another form. But when the ball hits something at the bottom the kinetic energy is converted to heat on impact and kinetic energy of the randomly scattered secondary impacts. Under frictional forces they eventually come to rest and all the energy is radiated away as heat. That is under the Second Law.
Well, … can’t you just use that heat energy again? No you can’t because it is not in a form that can do any work. The scattering of all the impact objects and the heat generated increases the entropy of that system. That is sort of a noise that makes the use of the energy once stored in the ball (at the top of the hill) now useless.
The same thing could be said of an ice cube melting in water. Once the ice and water has come into a thermal equilibrium no further change is possible. Entropy has been maximised and nothing useful can be derived from the system.
To turn the water back to ice you need a device that lowers entropy and causes the water molecules to be ordered into a crystalline lattice — an ice block. Such a device is called a refrigerator (a heat pump), but to achieve the reversal of entropy you need to put power into the device that reduces the entropy and pushes the water/ice system back up the “thermodynamic hill”.
That would be like pushing the ball back up the hill and that requires you to put in energy to store up the gravitational potential energy in the ball again.
You could harvest radiowaves from the environment but how do you make them useful to power a tuning circuit to receive a signal? You need to put energy into it.
How would you run a car with its massive power requirements that does not come from the nanowatts of power in the radio transmission signal? You have to put in a lot of additional energy, kilowatts at least, a million times more than you get from the air. Where does that come from? A coal fired power station, or, if you like, solar panels and storage batteries. But not at zero cost.
The website Exclusive Bizz, published February 2nd, 2025, discusses Chikumbutso’s claims but also discusses prior claims of other fraudulent inventions.
Zimbabwean inventor Maxwell Chikumbutso is making headlines once again after being hosted by President Emmerson Mnangagwa at State House, Harare, on January 28. Chikumbutso claims to have developed a vehicle powered by radio frequency (RF) waves—an assertion widely dismissed by experts as pseudoscience, particularly in light of his RF-Powered Car Claim, which raises critical questions about its feasibility.
Scientists have long established that RF energy is far too weak to power an automobile, making Chikumbutso’s claims scientifically untenable. His reappearance on such a high-profile platform, promoting a supposed breakthrough that defies fundamental principles of physics, warrants critical scientific scrutiny.
Through his company, Saith Technologies, Chikumbutso has previously claimed to have developed “free energy” devices, including an RF-powered generator and vehicles. However, no independent verification of his work has ever been provided. Experts continue to emphasize that RF waves lack sufficient energy to power a car, thereby undermining his RF-Powered Car Claim, which remains unsupported by scientific evidence.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence debunking such concepts, claims like these persist, fueled by social media misinformation and widespread public hope for revolutionary energy solutions. History is littered with similar high-profile hoaxes involving so-called alternative fuel technologies—many of which resulted in financial losses and disillusioned supporters.
Chikumbutso’s RF-Powered Car Claim illustrates the persistent allure of innovative energy solutions, even when they contradict established science. (my emphases added)
The Myth of Free Energy: Maxwell Chikumbutso’s RF-Powered Car Claim Faces Scientific Scrutiny
There is never going to be a “free lunch”! There is always a cost! So if you hear any claim that sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. You must always verify.
This side of Heaven, or Paradise, we’ll always need to work to extract fuel sources that generate electricity and they always have an imperfect efficiency factor. Waste heat is always generated that cannot be used for the generation of useful work.
But God has provided energy in the hydrocarbons found in the rocks to give us power for hundreds of thousands of years. I think actually that could almost be extended indefinitely once you realise that petroleum is not fossiliferous but primordial. That means that it has been cooked up in the basement rocks of Earth since the time of creation, less than 8,000 years ago. For more information on that read my articles listed below.
Related Reading
- Thermodynamics and Creation: A Scientific Perspectives!
- Abiogenic Deep Origin of Hydrocarbons: Not Fossils But Primordial
- Coal, the Creator’s Providential Provision
- Green Hydrogen | Mythology Meets Reality
- It Was No Accident: All Forms of Energy Were Provided by the Creator
- The Problem with All Green Energy is …. Basic Physics
Free Subscribers
Subscribe to our Newsletters as a Free Subscriber and be notified by email. Just put your email address in the box at the bottom of your screen.
You’ll get an email each time we publish a new article. It is quick and easy to do and totally free. You only need do it once.
Premium Subscribers
Subscribe to our Newsletters as a Premium Subscribers at $5 USD/month or $30 USD/year (you choose).
Paid Premium Subscribers will get exclusive access to certain content I publish. That will only cost you a cup of coffee per month.
Also you’ll be able to download, for free, a PDF of my book Apocalypse Now and also a PDF of my book Physics of Creation The Creator’s Ultimate Design for Earth.
You can download them from the link below.
This is how you can support my work. I have been publishing this website for 10 years now and up to 2024 I never asked for any support.
Press the button “Premium” on the front page to find a list of Premium content. Thanks so much to all supporters.
At a minimum, please join as a Free Subscriber. It’ll cost you nothing. It may also help me beat the shadow banning of some posts.
Bible Science Forum 
Leave a comment