It's tough to be green in paranoid times - homemade hydrogen car causes bomb scare in New Zealand
In a world made paranoid by a few terrorist attacks and governments more than willing to exploit people's fears of more, being an environmentally conscious car hacker can be tough. In the wake of London police finding a pair of apparent car bombs and a flaming car at Glasgow Scotland airport, New Zealand police were feeling a little skittish.
A security guard in New Zealand spotted a propane tank in the back of a Nissan Station Wagon in a parking lot. Since the propane tank was wired into the vehicle he decided it would be prudent to contact the police. After the bomb squad had their way with the car, the owner was finally tracked down. The elderly gentleman explained that he was an inventor and it was a device to produce hydrogen from water on board to fuel the car. That itself might explain why the car was parked.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bob 5:03PM (7/04/2007)
"In a world made paranoid by a few terrorist attacks..."
A few?
Nice work. Really nice work.
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Tim 6:01PM (7/04/2007)
Gee, I wonder how safe people would feel with huge tankers of hydrogen rolling down the highway or parked at their local shopping center? Ahh, nice fat juicy terror targets....
Hello! Any pressurized gas is dangerous. Add highly flammable and you have a bomb. It really doesn’t matter if its Hydrogen, CNG, LNG, Methane or whatever, it’s a terrorist’s dream. You can throw a lit match into diesel (bio or petro) that has been spilled on the ground and it won’t ignite. Try that with gasoline or ethanol. Just one spark with any of these fuel gasses and BOOM! Even Al “Green” Gore is worried. http://www.lngdanger.com/.
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Domenick 6:18PM (7/04/2007)
Be careful! New Zealand is just crawling with terrorists.
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Calebe 9:08AM (7/09/2007)
Some people just love to be paranoid. Drama drama drama.
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Onefastgta 7:35PM (7/05/2007)
Ha, If that happened in the USA we would have charged him with inciting a riot and then billed him for $50,000 for the bomb squad.
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A.Brien 10:42PM (7/06/2007)
Im sure that his invention help him to save money and if it's well made it's not dangerous. No need to store to much hydrogen, it's made on the fly and almost use instantly. The thing is that the electronic of the engine have to be modified to retune the engine the use hydrogen or a mix of hydrogen and gasoline or diesel. Modern car are harder to retune because the new computer are more sophisticate and not reprogrammable. The best is to switch to a standalone programmable engine computer and it cost 1500-2500$ approx. The car compagnies if they were honest, can build a system like that on actual car for few money.
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