Are recent claims from India of a car fueled by water and calcium carbide legitimate? Recently, I came across a video and a news report where it has been reported that a man from India has invented a car which uses water as a key fuel component. The car runs on acetylene gas produced by the reaction of water and calcium carbide in the car's fuel tank. The source of the video is this post off Facebook from History TV18. The claims are too good to be true and I doubt them. However, I do not know much about cars, automobile/mechanical engineering, and chemistry to check the veracity of the claims. How legitimate are the claims? Do they hold any merit?

The car does not run on water. The article you link says quite clearly that "The car runs on acetylene gas".

Acetylene is an explosive gas that is used for welding, and before the invention of electric lamps it was used for lighting. It is produced from the reaction of calcium carbide and water, as follows:

CaC2 \+ 2H2O → Ca(OH)2 \+ C2H2

The problem is that, while water is cheap, CaC2 is not. It is normally made from methane - which would be a better and cheaper fuel. Converting it to Calcium Carbide is done by partial combustion, so some of the energy available in methane is lost.

For more information on acetylene, see the Wikipedia article.