Excessive E unveils hydrogen automotive for subsequent season

Excessive E, the electrical off-road racing collection, is transitioning to utilizing hydrogen as an alternative of batteries for the 2025 season, and right this moment it unveiled the automotive it plans to make use of subsequent 12 months – when it can additionally change its title to Excessive H.

Excessive E is within the midst of its fourth season proper now, having had the primary race weekend in Saudi Arabia and with the second race weekend arising in Scotland, July 13-14.

Prior to now three seasons, we’ve been handled to some fairly wild off-road racing, with highly effective electrical automobiles bouncing over desert sand dunes, glaciers, seashores, and even an previous coal mine.

It’s been thrilling to look at, however the collection additionally has a sustainability message – every location is supposed to spotlight an ecological problem we’re all going through, and the collection additionally does a “legacy programme” the place it participates in making an attempt to resolve some native conservation problem (e.g. mangrove or ocean seagrass preservation, wildfires, glacier soften, or so on).

To this finish, the collection additionally focuses on being sustainable in its personal practices. Automobiles are shipped from race to race on the St. Helena, an ship transformed to make use of extra sustainable applied sciences and to function a analysis lab for the scientists the collection companions with. And the collection tries to create much less waste in every of its areas, with everybody bringing their very own reusable plates and silverware for instance.

And because it races in distant areas, it must get vitality from someplace. The automobiles don’t simply cost themselves. So the collection has been utilizing inexperienced hydrogen – made with renewable vitality, versus the vast majority of hydrogen which comes from methane fuel – to cost autos, with giant transportable gas cells (and second life batteries for backup) bringing energy to areas the place the grid doesn’t attain.

So, for season 5, Excessive E is “slicing out the center man” and simply going straight from hydrogen to electrical energy onboard the automotive, as an alternative of charging a battery with an offboard gas cell. And right here’s subsequent season’s automobile, which Excessive E – or slightly, Excessive H, as will probably be recognized beginning in 2025 – is looking the “Pioneer 25.”

Excessive H unveils Pioneer 25 race automotive

The Pioneer 25 shares a variety of similarities with the outgoing Odyssey 21 automotive.

They each have ~400kW/550hp value of energy out there, can do 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds with a high velocity of ~200kph (~124mph), and might scale a slope of as much as 130% (53º). So when it comes to the fundamental specs, the automobiles appear fairly shut.

However there are a pair small variations that we will see to date. The Odyssey 21 was 2.3 meters large, and the Pioneer 25 is 2.4 meters. The Odyssey had two “seats,” with the motive force offset to the left, whereas the Pioneer seats the motive force within the middle.

And the largest distinction of all – Excessive E mentioned that the Odyssey weighs 1,895kg (we’re undecided if this consists of the motive force or not), but it surely says that the Pioneer weighs 2,200kg, a 305kg (672lb) improve.

That’s an enormous distinction, particularly for a race automotive, and particularly if the automobiles have the identical energy out there. We’re undecided how they’ll quote the identical 0-60 time with such a weight distinction and no distinction in motor energy (torque will not be listed, however is probably going the identical provided that battery electrical (BEV) and fuel-cell electrical autos (FCEV) each run on electrical motors, so we’d think about they’re carrying over the identical or related motors).

And we’re additionally undecided the place all that weight is coming from. One of many supposed advantages of hydrogen is larger vitality density, which implies much less want for heavy EV batteries. However an FCEV wants two extra elements {that a} BEV doesn’t – a gas cell stack and a high-pressure hydrogen tank. FCEV’s additionally have a battery to behave as a buffer for the gas cell stack, however it may be quite a bit smaller than on a full BEV.

However the Odyssey solely had 54kWh (40kWh usable) of batteries onboard to start with – comparatively small within the scheme of EV batteries nowadays. Off-road racing is vitality intense, however races for the collection aren’t very lengthy, so 40kWh is sufficient. So slicing battery dimension may avoid wasting weight, however not all that a lot.

So maybe the Pioneer nonetheless has a comparatively giant battery (as bigger batteries can push extra energy), and the extra weight of a gas cell stack and excessive stress tank – the final of which needs to be fairly heavy obligation to carry hydrogen, particularly within the tough racing situations Excessive H will likely be racing in (a 700 bar, 4-6kg capability tank is round 100kg – the Pioneer has a 2kg tank, however could also be strengthened extra for racing functions).

Excessive H says that “general efficiency of the automotive has taken a giant step ahead,” and that the suspension geometry of the automotive has been absolutely redesigned. The Odyssey additionally noticed adjustments over its lifetime, altering suspension suppliers final season to FOX, and the Excessive H may even use FOX suspension.

However we’re nonetheless undecided how a automotive with equivalent energy and way more weight can carry out higher. Let’s go forward and put a pin in that for once we see these automobiles in motion.

Fortunately, we’ll have an opportunity quickly. The Pioneer 25 will go on its first public take a look at on the Hydro X Prix in Scotland on July 13-14.

Excessive H additionally introduced a provisional listing of race areas for subsequent 12 months, with races in Saudi Arabia, UK, Germany, Italy, and USA.

Electrek’s Take

I believe that almost all of our readers acknowledge at this level that hydrogen will not be going to take off in client autos. If this collection needs to push hydrogen as an thought for client automobiles, or for sportscars, it’s… in all probability not going to go wherever.

Nonetheless, for the race collection’ particular use case, it makes some quantity of sense. The collection was already utilizing hydrogen anyway, and hydrogen is much more transportable than batteries for locations with no grid. And Excessive E thinks it has made its level, demonstrated that BEVs are able to any such racing, and might transfer on to one thing new now.

However the truth that this transfer has resulted in such an enormous weight achieve for the automobiles is puzzling to me. Whereas I’ve seen extraordinarily heavy tanks on gas cell autos earlier than (e.g. the Nikola Tre FCEV class 8 truck has 4 tanks weighing 450lb every, a gas cell stack and a 164kWh buffer battery, and the Honda CR-V e:FCEV is 1,000lbs heavier than the fuel CR-V), you don’t usually see racing/sports activities automobiles gaining such monumental quantities of weight within the span of 1 era (the 1,000+lb heavier 2025 BMW M5 however).

So I wrestle considerably to see the purpose of this. Beforehand, Excessive E hosted superior race occasions with a neat story, demonstrating environmental points and displaying a practical and sustainable reply for transportation – BEVs. It fueled these BEVs with hydrogen via offboard stacks and tanks, leaving the burden and complexity of them behind within the paddock because the automobiles frolick round within the dust.

Now, it’s internet hosting superior race occasions with a neat story, demonstrating environmental points and displaying off… a transportation reply that demonstrably doesn’t make any sense, lumbering round carrying all this additional tools that can by no means see the sunshine of day at scale in client purposes.

The one factor it may assist to encourage is getting the inexperienced hydrogen financial system going, since presently ~95% of the worldwide provide of hydrogen comes from methane, a fossil gas that’s extremely damaging from a local weather perspective. Inexperienced hydrogen is generated by electrolysis of water through renewable vitality, basically utilizing the hydrogen as a extra transportable however much less environment friendly battery to retailer that renewable vitality.

A inexperienced hydrogen financial system may very well be helpful if we ever provide you with widespread makes use of for hydrogen (which may discover a area of interest in heavy transport) – however these makes use of aren’t more likely to are available client purposes. And in the event that they lead to a 305kg weight penalty, I don’t actually see them taking place in racing purposes both.