Honda has announced that its research and development arm, working alongside industrial giant Hitachi, has developed a compact and portable breathalyzer that’s smarter than your average bear. Or, at least, it’s smarter than your average breathalyzer, able as it is to distinguish between human breath and “alternative gases.” Per Honda, this renders the device “tamper-proof.”

The breathalyzer is able to detect non-human gases?or alternative human gases, which we’ll leave right there?by way of a “saturated water vapor sensor.” Hitachi was able to shrink this sensor such that it could fit in the prototype breathalyzer, which is roughly the size of an average car’s smart key. The sensor itself incorporates a pair of electrodes that sandwich an oxide insulator; when humid human breath passes over the insulator, the moisture in it is absorbed?allowing a current to pass between the electrodes. (Water, remember, is conductive.) Of course, the device might be able to tell the difference between your breath and, say, air escaping the neck of an inflated balloon?but it can’t tell who is blowing for a reading. An intoxicated driver could still, theoretically, pass the Honda/Hitachi device to a sober bystander to fool the system.
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