(CNN) -- The Nissan Pathfinder that prompted police to close off parts of New York's Times Square contained bomb-making materials, the city's mayor said.
"There were gas cans and bomb making materials in the car," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters early Sunday morning. "Who abandoned the car and why are under investigation."
Authorities also found three propane tanks, batteries, consumer-grade fireworks and a locked metal box that resembled a gun locker in the vehicle.
The wiring around the device "was nothing that looked amateurish," Bloomberg said. "It certainly could have exploded and caused a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact."
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Officials said authorities are going through video from dozens of surveillance cameras in the area.
"So far, we have no reports of anybody running away (from the car)," Bloomberg said. "That doesn't mean there won't be when we look at all the cameras."
Following the incident, security in other burroughs was heightened, but nothing suspicious was reported anywhere else, the mayor said.
Authorities interviewed the person who owned the truck that originally bore the license plate found on the Pathfinder.
He told investigators he took the truck to a junkyard. Detectives were trying to find the owner of the junkyard.
The mayor said authorities did not have reason to believe the truck owner "had anything to do with it or his story is false."
The shutdown began Saturday when a street vendor saw smoke coming from a box inside a vehicle with Connecticut plates on 45th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. The vendor notified a mounted New York police officer, who smelled gunpowder from the vehicle.
A robot from the city police department's bomb squad was in the process of taking the box out of the back seat of the vehicle.
The FBI was on the scene as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, with a spokesman telling CNN the agency was taking the situation "very seriously" and that the situation was still being sorted out.
The Department of Homeland Security said it was monitoring the developments. President Obama, who was updated on the situation late Saturday night, said the federal government was prepared to provide support.
Hotels and restaurants were on lockdown and several blocks around Times Square, an iconic landmark popular with tourists, closed to pedestrian and car traffic.
The Marriott Marquis hotel wasn't allowing anyone to enter or leave the hotel Saturday night, and at least one nearby restaurant, TGI Friday's, closed to customers and evacuated staff.
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