Autoblog

Toward the end of The Professional, Detective Stansfield is about to go after hitman Leon, and Stansfield tells his second in command "Get me everyone." When his second asks what he means, he screams "I... mean... EVERYONE." Something like that must have happened in Osaka, Japan, when the police department got a bead on a man wanted for assaulting police officers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Hirofumi Fukuda, driving a white Lexus sedan, was approached by a patrol car for running red lights. When he saw the police, he did what any self-respecting lawbreaker would do: he took off. That's the easy part. The double-take comes when it took 2,240 police officers, 460 police cars, and one helicopter two hours to catch the man. The city of Osaka is just 85.4 square miles -- about the size of Baltimore. Which is a lot of police in a little space looking for one single guy. And in fact, they didn't catch him: he crashed into a bridge support and sustained minor injuries. If he ever gets out of prison, he'll be a great guy to play Grand Theft Auto IV with.

Thanks for the tip, catgirlshyla!

[Source: Japan Today]

Technically this Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle made the 560km journey on four tanks of hydrogen, as that's how many high pressure pods are hidden away under the Toyota Kluger's rear seats. But the big news is that this car, and a back up sibling, managed to drive 350 miles from the hydrogen fueling station by the Osaka Prefectural Government Office to Toyota's Mega Web theme park in Toyota without needing to stop for more, err, gas. The car even had 30-percent of its fuel left -- running its A/C the entire time -- which mathematically gives it a 480-mile range. That's double the range of most current fuel-cell vehicles.

Thanks to improvements to the car's fuel cells and the management system that controls the hybrid's charging and discharging, the FCHVs used today are 25% more efficient than their predecessors, which have been roaming Japan's streets since 2001 undergoing testing. New stronger tanks that can hold hydrogen at twice the pressure of the old ones also helped the car reach such an impressive range.