Hydrogen Fuel Cell from Dutchman is a scam

Dear Guest,

I think you may have a few options here.

If you charged any of the items or services on a credit card contact your card provider. You may be able to introduce these scammers to a wonderful thing called a "credit card charge back".

File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

My state (NJ) requires licenses and continuing education for any business or technician who does any work that can effect auto emissions. Find out if your jurisdiction does and report the miscreants.

You could see a lawyer. The last resort in my opinion.

I hope that these scammers didn't damage your engine or void any remaining warranty you may have had.

Ed

I'd advise going to a Toyota dealer or a Toyota mechanic with a good reputation and have them remove the device and evaluate any damage to your car resulting from the device's installation.

It is against federal law to tamper with the emissions system, which installers of HHO devices routinely do, as they pretend to get these devices to work. Some installers know full well that the devices do not work; others appear to believe that the devices work as advertised -- but in either case, the devices do not work, never have, and never will. In any case, be sure to report your installer to the EPA -- tampering is a federal crime.

Dutchman is run by Dennis Lee, a convicted fraud, who keeps coming up with new schemes to swindle people. One would hope that he is sued out of existence or put back in jail for a much longer time, but I do not have a lot of hope. These HHO scams are very popular, and recently even an MIT PhD (working a university in Florida) was fooled into believing (or at least the involved TV station made is seem as if he believed) that one such device improved fuel efficiency by 10%. (See: this and this .) Of course, these devices do no such thing, and CANNOT do such a thing. The incontrovertible fact is: these units consume more energy than the energy value of the H2/O2 mix created. This is a very basic chemistry and physics fact, that no such unit can "get around". I am barely exaggerating when I say that the likelihood of one of these devices working is about the same as the likelihood of the sun rising in the west.

The "saving grace" for these devices, from the scammer's perspective, is that they do nothing: The power used by the device (typically 100 watts) is such a tiny fraction of the engine's output (typically 100,000 watts max, 15,000 watts at cruise) that the reduction in fuel efficiency is virtually impossible to measure, even with a chassis dynamometer. The reason honest people report efficiency improvements is that they expect to see an improvement, drive differently, etc... placebo effect. There are people who provide testimonials for fuel line magnets too, which have no effect at all, and could not be expected to have any effect, because magnetic fields do absolutely nothing to fuel. (The EPA has tested many such devices, has not found one that works at all.)

If you poke around on this site, you will find many threads and hundreds of posts on HHO, "Browns Gas", electrolysers, etc. (There are legitimate uses for electrolysers, but most of those are well known so do not show up here: in general, if you search for electrolyser here you will find discussions of scams. Some members here are involved in such scams, and I have no way of knowing which ones are simply ill-informed, and which ones are Dennis Lee replicas -- active, knowing, fraudsters.)

I appreciate your taking the time to post. Hopefully, your experience will steer others away from such buying such devices.

I have personal experience with putting a fraudulent invention marketing company out of business, so I know it is possible to stop fraud, and know that the FTC will try to stop the worst frauds. I hope you will write to the FTC. Unfortunately, they seem to have little time for prosecuting these HHO frauds.

You mention that one of your friend's kits stopped working. If (this is a big if) your friend really believed it ever worked, he is not alone. However, these devices do not work, ever, in any way shape or form. Popular mechanics did a test of a very carefully built unit which demonstrated that it had no effect at all, exactly as the science would predict. The fact that your unit reduced performance has more to do with damage and maladjustment of the emission control system caused upon installation, than with the HHO device itself, which should have no measurable effect at all, if it is installed without creating a vacuum leak. The Dutchman kit comes with a device that "fools" (they say) the ECU into thinking the engine is running a little rich (and the ECU then leans out the mixture). All that is required for such "fooling" is a simple resistor bridge (50 cents worth of resistors) to change the output of the O2 sensor. This modification is illegal because (although is can make a tiny improvement to fuel efficiency under certain conditions -- e.g., 1 mpg) it increases NOx emissions. (It also reduces driveability.)

Dennis Lee has made so much money selling dealer rights to a perpetual motion machine (which has never been demonstrated to work, of course) that he could afford ads (for his PICC and HAFC) on magazines like Newsweek (a hundreds of thousands of dollars per ad). The PICC, incidentally, is complete gibberish, and is only a come-on for the HAFC, which itself does not work. The HAFC might seem to have the possibility of working, to someone who is not schooled in chemistry or physics -- let's say a car mechanic who is not too engaged in really thinking about how cars work. But the PICC is just idiotic, with nothing in the promo video making any sense at all.

Dr Abtahi was fooled, and designed a test that was so obviously flawed that my eighth grade daughter was able to point our many sources for errors greater than his 10% claim of possible improvement. (In an email to me he said: "Please refer to the full interview on WPTV, I made it quite clear that our tests were not scientific and that no solid conclusions could be drawn from these tests. We will be happy to design a full scientific experiment if funding is provided.") (In fact, he did not make that point clear, at least as the retest was broadcast... and he was billed as an expert, representing the university -- in which case, the test should have been designed to have some scientific validity.) So at least you are not alone in being fooled by Dennis Lee and others like him. I am sorry to hear about your experience and hope that you can sue to get your money back, including punitive damages, lost time, etc.