Hydrogen Car Almost Makes Nancy Pelosi President
According to the Detroit News:
Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.
Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford’s hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.
“I just thought, ‘Oh my goodness!’ So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front,” Mulally said. “I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen This is all off the record, right?”
OK. So our illustrious leaders are a few homeworks short of a gentleman’s C, and I’m not too surprised that a major CEO would think they can’t be trusted to figure out which end of the car to plug an extension cord into. However here’s my question:
Just what the hell is Ford doing building a car that can blow up and kill people if some random idiot (or the President of the United States) sticks the plug into the wrong hole?
Cars are off-the-shelf consumer products, albeit expensive ones. They’re dangerous enough when moving. Nothing a user can do with one when it’s standing still should have any possibility of killing the so-called leader of the free world, no matter how big an idiot he is.
If it’s really possible to immolate one’s self and various bystanders by sticking an extension cord into the fuel tank, then there’s a major design flaw in Ford’s Airstream Concept. If this isn’t fixed before they go to market, this is going to make the Ford Pinto fiasco look like a problem with the chrome logo falling off in a bad rain.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:51 AM
How does one plug a power cord into a Hydrogen tank?
That makes NO sense.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:48 PM
“How does one plug a power cord into a Hydrogen tank?”
Using the same strategy as GWB is using in Iraq.
1. Act like it’ll be a simple task.
2. Don’t prepare for difficulties, since it’ll be a simple task.
3. When it proves more difficult, keep trying the same approach, only harder.
4. Respond to critics by saying they don’t understand the real problem.
5. Keep escalating force until something breaks or explodes
Step #5 solves the original problem by creating an entirely different one.
This is just the long-winded version of what I first heard as the Repairman’s Strategem of Murphy’s Law: “If it jams, force it; if it breaks, it needed fixing anyway.”
April 8th, 2007 at 6:23 PM
Er… Is it just me, and I may be just working on 10watt bulbs, but doess that photo look retouched? Look at the edges of the heads….
Also… I don’t know of any ordinary car where the wheel arch is quite up to a persons… um… nether regions…
Just my 2c.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:02 PM
The answer to your question is that they car in question was a concept demonstration, at best an early prototype. It was a long way from anything that a consumer would see.
I’m no fan of Ford or George W but this didn’t seem so strange to me.
Don
April 9th, 2007 at 10:06 AM
“How does one plug a power cord into a Hydrogen tank?â€
As the husband of a woman who had to work very hard to
get diesel fuel into the gas tank of a car that was expecting
regular gas, I find the point of the original post completely
right on.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:13 AM
It was a bad joke:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/11/news/newsmakers/bc.ford.bush.joke.reut/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories