Held by the archive · 02:26 · The .mp4 file
Footage
Horvath's hydrogen car in Brisbane, as 7NEWS retold it
A 7NEWS Brisbane segment of about November 2020, made when Queensland swore in its first hydrogen minister, Mick de Brenni. It looks back at the launch of Stephen Horvath's hydrogen car, a green Ford Fairlane, in a Brisbane plaza with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The car was promoted as running on water through "a nuclear reaction" in the cylinders. Sir Joh was to drink the liquid, which was served in a chip bucket because no glass could be found. On the first day the car could not be started, because Horvath's mechanic had left with the keys. The next day it ran, with steam at the exhaust, but did not move, and the press were not allowed to see inside the boot. University of Queensland physicists called it a hoax, since fusion needs "at least 40 million degrees"; Bjelke-Petersen answered that they did not know the facts. The broadcast does not date the launch; the archive's other sources put it in 1980. Not a Meyer film: kept because Horvath's car is the one in the Hansen affair; see the Marion Star's "No action now" (1984) in the library.
- Taken
- 1 November 2020
- Runs
- 2:26
- Cite as
- [[media:horvath-hydrogen-car-7news]]
- From
- Not Meyer. Stephen Horvath's hydrogen car was launched in Brisbane with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen behind it, and it was this car, not Meyer's, that Representative George Hansen took to the Pentagon in 1981. The story is often told as Meyer's, which is why the archive keeps the record of it. Held by the archive, as a file on its own CDN. Listed in database/content/films/stephen-horvath.json.
7NEWS Brisbane, about November 2020, re-using the Seven Network's own film of the launch from State Affair with Glenn Taylor (Rod Young reporting).