Hydrogen propulsion is mostly seen as a curious oddity here in America. Hydrogen fuel cell cars haven’t caught on, and much of the world just uses batteries as their choice of alternative fuel. JCB, a construction equipment manufacturer from the United Kingdom, set out to prove that hydrogen has real merits by strapping two hydrogen internal combustion engines from construction loaders into a land-speed racer. That car just sped across the line at the Bonneville Salt Flats at 368.347 MPH, setting both a new SCTA class record at SpeedWeek and completely blowing JCB’s previous speed record out of the water.
I have spent much of my week at the Southern California Timing Association and Bonneville Nationals Inc. SpeedWeek. This was my first time ever stepping foot onto the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, and my first time witnessing land speed racing with my own eyes. It has been such a thrilling experience from start to finish that I have an itch to see myself racing on the salt one day. I became so obsessed with the salt that I sniffed and tasted it!
While learning everything about land speed racing was a huge part of my time on the flats, I was also there to witness history. Twenty years ago, JCB Equipment was a fresh face in the diesel world. To market and prove how awesome its new diesel engine was, JCB strapped a pair of 4.4-liter, four-cylinder diesel engines into a streamliner. Then, they had to find the right driver.
The man to take that car to victory was none other than retired Royal Air Force Wing Commander Andy Green OBE. While Andy had a decorated career flying fighter jets, he was perhaps most famous for taking the ThrustSSC to an incredible 763.035 mph in 1997. Andy is the first and still the only man to have broken the sound barrier in a car, and the ThrustSSC record remains unbroken.
That made Andy the perfect person to drive the Dieselmax to an astonishing 350.092 mph, setting a record for diesel cars that also remains unbroken.
Last year, JCB started a new chapter in its history when its new hydrogen internal combustion engine received certification. What does JCB do with a new innovative engine on hand? The same thing it did 20 years ago. This is the Hydromax, the car designed not just to destroy the Dieselmax’s record, but prove that hydrogen engines aren’t some novelty. Technically, while the Hydromax’s record is for 368 mph, I saw it go even faster.
Hydrogen Power
I will be publishing a deep dive on the engineering behind the Hydromax at a later date. For now, I want to tell you just enough so that you can picture just how awesome it was to see this car in action.
The Hydromax story begins with its heart. Or, more specifically, its two hearts. JCB’s hydrogen internal combustion engine, code name 448ABH2, is a 4.8-liter, four-cylinder mill with 74 horsepower and 325 lb-ft of torque on deck. This engine is meant to live in loaders, diggers, and other kinds of construction equipment. It was designed to replace a comparable diesel engine and is meant to do the kind of work that a diesel does, but with none of the emissions.
In its research, JCB found that batteries are an imperfect solution to construction equipment. If you’re building something in a remote area, you probably aren’t going to have access to the tons of power needed to recharge a large battery inside of an industrial machine. Even if you did, you probably don’t want to wait for your loader to recharge when it could be working.
For JCB, a hydrogen combustion engine is the best of both worlds. The engine makes the same sort of sounds as a gas engine, has spark plugs, operates with the same sorts of controls, and behaves like any other internal combustion engine. That means an operator can just hop in and run it. For those who love internal combustion, JCB says, their engine will feel the same as what they’re used to. But, at the same time, the engine isn’t spewing harmful emissions.
Likewise, JCB says, its research has shown that operators haul diesel fuel to worksites. So, the JCB hydrogen system works on the same principle. Customers can have a trailer on site stocked with hydrogen at the ready to refill a piece of construction equipment in about 10 minutes or less.
JCB recognizes that hydrogen has had a tough run around the world. Hydrogen cars seem like dead ends, and much of the public still thinks, incorrectly, that hydrogen vehicles will explode. Most companies are investing in electrification, not hydrogen. JCB believes that hydrogen will be great for the specific use case of construction equipment. I’m not sure if that’s what the future will look like, but I do adore the engineering that went into this five-year, $132 million project.
To The Limit
Anyway, 74 HP isn’t quite enough to set the kind of speed record that JCB was looking for here. So, the company took production backhoe hydrogen engines and ironed them out for more power.
In construction equipment guise, the engine is limited to 2,200 RPM. That wasn’t going to work, so the engine was cranked up to 4,000 RPM in the racing version. That, JCB says, quadrupled torque output. But that wasn’t all that was done. The base engine’s port injection system was swapped for direct injection, with injection pressures rising from 145 PSI to 725 PSI. This was done for better fuel burn and to allow the engine to burn more fuel, period. The engine’s pushrods were replaced by double overhead cams. This allowed the Hydromax team greater control over valve timing. The JCB team also trimmed weight from the engine and installed a dry sump oiling system.
The craziest change, to me, anyway, is that the racing version of the engine doesn’t utilize a fan and radiator. Instead, its cooling fluid is kept cool with a literal box of ice. By strapping iceboxes to the car, the charged air from the turbos is cooled from 392 degrees to just 50 degrees before entering the engine.
The result? 800 HP per engine, and the Hydromax has two of them. Since there are two of everything, there are also two iceboxes. One is in the nose and cools the front engine, while there’s another in the middle to cool the rear engine. Filling them goes exactly as you’d expect, as the JCB team dumps cubes of ice into the containers. Together, the containers house 551 pounds of ice.
Yet, despite all of the changes, JCB’s engineers told me, some really important parts of the engine remain unchanged. The crankshaft, for example, is stock. That crank is also one of the common parts that the hydrogen engine shares with JCB’s diesel engine. In the stock engine, the sump, bedplate, block, cylinder head, intake manifold and rocker cover are also common parts with JCB’s diesel.
Another neat bit about the Hydromax is that both engines run independently and feature their own six-speed racing transmissions. This means that the Hydromax is four-wheel drive. Those transmissions feature the same clutches used in JCB’s production machinery. Linking the engines and transmissions together is a sophisticated computer system that both monitors engine vitals, synchronizes the transmissions, and controls throttle output for both engines.
The computerization means that Andy uses a familiar accelerator and flappy paddles. Andy demanded that much of the car be manual, so the car only shifts when he tells it to. The only driver aids are Andy’s brain, hands, and feet.
As for the car itself, it features a steel frame and a large carbon fiber tub is permanently bonded to it. Sections of the vehicle can be removed for repairs or transport, but otherwise, it’s a 32-foot-long rigid structure. Four custom Goodyear tires carry the car to its fanatical speeds.
JCB says that the hydrogen land speed car project was started 18 months ago, but building and development didn’t start until only 12 months ago. Everything you see here was made within the past 12 months. Also, that carbon body? It wasn’t shaped by wind tunnel testing. Instead, its form was dictated by computational fluid dynamics.
The transmissions don’t engage until 62 mph, so the Hydromax needs a kick to get going. A Land Rover Defender Octa is used to get things moving.
All of the hard work of JCB and its partner companies came to a head this week in Bonneville. Dozens of engineers and support crew took over a firehouse in the Wendover Airport Museum to make sure this car was going to hit its goal.
The Hydromax ran in the Southern California Timing Association’s (SCTA) Blown Gas Streamliner (AA/BGS, 500+ cubic inches) class. The last record in this class was set in 2010 at 348.342 mph. Given Dieselmax’s record of 350 mph, the JCB team was targeting at least 351 mph.
Getting there was tough. First, Andy and JCB had to take the car for shakedown runs. Then, he had to qualify for the license that would allow him to perform the record run in the first place. So, Hydromax got workouts as speeds gradually increased to around 302 mph.
Then, on Monday, the Hydromax threw the team a curveball. The front engine’s computer registered low oil pressure during the last run of the day. The JCB team decided not to take any chances and pulled an all-nighter removing the affected engine, replacing it with one of the four spares that JCB brought, and then rebuilding the front-end of the car. This process did not just involve bolting things back together, either. The alignment had to be set through a laser system, and the car had to go through another shakedown run.
The cause of all of this headache? Engineers believed it was an oil cooler.
The JCB team hoped to start their record-qualifying runs on Tuesday, but the engine replacement pushed everything back a day. But, yesterday, the stars aligned. Andy first drove the car to 307 mph, qualifying it for the record run. Watch:
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Then, later, he rolled up to the start line again. One of the car’s cooling switches tripped, suggesting that something wasn’t the temperature it should have been. The team thought that they would have to scrap the record run, then something amazing happened: They discovered that the cooling switch was a big liar, and the car was fine. So, Andy strapped in, fired up the glorious engines, and set off.
The result? 367.141 mph through the traps. In just a single run, not only did Andy and the Hydromax decimate the Dieselmax record and the class record, but they did so by a decent margin. The JCB team was so happy that I’m pretty sure I saw tears among the cheers. They deserved it, too. These people worked tirelessly over the past year to make this happen, and they got to watch their baby make history. I got to see it, too. Honestly, my mouth dropped, and I still haven’t been able to pick it up. As you can see below, the vehicle actually topped 370 mph!
They Did It!
There was one thing left to do, and it was one more run to make the record official. That happened this morning, when the Hydromax raced through the clocks at 369.554 mph, giving an average speed of 368.347 mph. JCB now has officially broken the Dieselmax’s record and the Blown Gas Streamliner record, but it’s not done yet.
Next week, Hydromax will return to the flats with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) watching. There, JCB hopes, it’ll set the world record for the fastest hydrogen car ever. Sadly, I will not be there for that one, but after getting to know the JCB team over this week, I have no doubt in their ability to do it.
These runs also changed my views on hydrogen. I’ve always admired the technology, but never really thought it had much of a future. I also never appreciated how fun it could be until now. JCB is right, a hydrogen combustion engine can preserve all of the sounds, vibrations, and even manual shifting that enthusiasts love about gassers and diesels, only much cleaner.
The JCB Hydromax sounds fierce, mean, and raspy. It makes all of the right sounds that I felt right in my heart. Then, as JCB proved, the machine was bloody fast. It was everything that so many enthusiasts still love about internal combustion, only the fuel was the most common element in the universe.
JCB’s idea of hydrogen power for construction seems like a niche that has some potential. Unlike a hydrogen car, a backhoe doesn’t need to be concerned with coast-to-coast infrastructure. The company hasn’t sold any hydrogen equipment yet, but has machines being demonstrated with customers on jobsites right now.
Being there was an experience that no video could truly capture. I watched the determination in Andy’s face, saw the literal sweat being invested by engineers, and felt the excitement of watching the car disappear into the distance as its rumble faded. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else at that moment.
I still have no idea if there’s a future in hydrogen. There are other technologies all jockeying to be the fuel of the future, and it looks like much of the world has landed on electrification. But if this is what a hydrogen future looks like, I can totally get behind it. Maybe, with some luck, JCB will let me play with some construction equipment. Until then, Andy Green OBE has yet another record on his belt, and maybe, next week, he and JCB will have the fastest hydrogen car on Earth.
All images: Author, unless otherwise noted.
If you want more like that, Superfast Matt has been documenting his pursuit of land speed records in various steamliners he’s built, he holds a few records, and makes some great YouTube videos. https://youtube.com/@Matt Brown
The video of Andy describing breaking the sound barrier in the Thrust SSC is absolutely wild – I’m wondering how much additional engineering effort had to go into accommodating the enormous brass balls on this dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D4-49pkEWY
Yes, he’s describing holding full opposite lock to maintain control at 600mph.
Love the article thank you
It doesn’t matter if hydrogen is never widely adopted in any industry. This is cool as hell.
“If you’re building something in a remote area, you probably aren’t going to have access to the tons of power needed to recharge a large battery inside of an industrial machine.”
Nor will you have access to the copious volumes of hydrogen needed to refill a large H2 tank inside of an industrial machine, probably 3x the volume of an equivalent diesel tank. And you will have far, far fewer sources for it off site; it’s not like you could buy hydrogen at the nearest truck stop in a pinch. Where is that hydrogen going to come from? How will it be stored? Will it be made from fossil fuels (probably since 95% of hydrogen is)? If so that is likely a less efficient, dirtier way to burn fossil fuels than to just burn them directly in these industrial machines.
A pinkie swear that only hydrogen from renewables will be used should be heavily scrutinized. Any hydrogen made thusly is better used for making steel, fertilizer, and other industrial processes that can only use hydrogen. Renewable hydrogen burned in these industrial machines denies those processes so they will use fossil fuel generated hydrogen for a net win to the environment of squat.
And it gets worse. To truly be clean that hydrogen MUST be generated with surplus renewables that would otherwise go to waste, otherwise the electricity used to make hydrogen denies other electricity consumers who will use fossil fuel generated power.
If these machines are intended to be used in mines or other enclosed environments where fossil fuels create hazardous conditions then sure go for it. But why TF would you use ICE? At best you’re going to get half the power from the hydrogen in a typical Otto cycle ICE as you would using a 63% peak TE HFC. And as Mercedes points out ICE is noisy, not something I think is desirable in an enclosed work environment. Fuel cells are quiet and AFAIK have almost no moving parts and are way cleaner. If you HAVE to use hydrogen they make much more sense.
“the fuel was the most common element in the universe.”
The most useless *feature* of all. Almost every bit of that hydrogen is locked safely away in the fusion cores of stars and in the enormous gravity wells of gas giants millions of miles to light years away.
Interesting effort, looks like a lot of fun time. However let’s be clear about Hydrogen.
Hydrogen is widely marketed as a clean fuel of the future, yet its reality is far more damaging. More than 90% of hydrogen production today is derived from coal gasification or steam methane reforming, both of which carry huge carbon footprints.
Hydrogen production is associated with emissions of almost 1,300 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent annually — and rather than declining, those emissions have edged upward in recent years.
The problem extends beyond CO₂. Hydrogen indirectly heats the atmosphere about 37 times faster than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after release, and leakage from pipelines, production facilities, and storage sites is a significant and growing source of atmospheric hydrogen.
When electrolysis uses electricity generated from burning natural gas, it produces twice the greenhouse gas emissions of steam methane reforming for the same quantity of hydrogen.
So there’s a reason it hasn’t caught on, thankfully…
Exactly. Thank you
I imagine there are quite a few use cases for hydrogen-powered heavy equipment. Underground mines for one. Just water vapor out the tailpipe. Do these engines generate NOx emissions?
I wonder if they could also strap on some LOX and meter according to optimal stoichiometry. You wouldn’t have all that nitrogen to pump through. Somebody smarter than me will probably find the flaw in that “logic.”
Yes, hydrogen ICE engines still have NOx emissions so a lot of the typical air quality benefits you’d get from a fuel cell hydrogen vehicle are negated.
Thx!
Using H2 in confined areas is unwise. H2 leaks through seemingly solid materials and will ignite at fuel/air ratios of 5%-95% (widest ratio range of any material). I once worked at a fuel cell company, so I’m familiar with the challenges.
Oh! Good point!
This is neat! But, it’s a niche case. There may be some places where this makes complete sense, like in very cold regions where batteries would struggle.
But, the same energy to make hydrogen could be used to power vehicles directly. For a lot of uses, that’s just fine. And uses less energy for the same work output once the energy losses throughout the respective systems are calculated. This is why electrification has taken off while hydrogen has stalled.
Hydrogen is sorta disadvantaged three ways – it’s hard to store, it’s not particularly energy-dense unless you expend additional energy to store it at cryogenic temperatures, and it is still (with the exception of fuel cells) subject to most of the vagaries of internal combusion.
But the biggest advantage is that you can make it anywhere you have abundant water and power – desalination and electrolysis and you can make your own hydrogen on-site. So if you’re powering a remote site – and let’s get fun with unit conversions here – a kilogram of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to a gallon of diesel, and generating a kilogram of hydrogen takes about 45-50kwh of power, which would be about the energy 20 square meters of panels could produce per day. At 10 pounds per square meter for lightweight panels, you hit a break-even point of fuel-generation vs. hauling fuel in around 30 days in. So if you’d rather make fuel rather than hauling it in, it’s not a bad way to go. And that’s, honestly, more where I’d see hydrogen go. Retail applications are kinda limited, but if you’ve got a solar plant that generates excess energy you can fuel up the on-site forklift and backhoe and whatever else.
Except….why not just charge the machines? Swappable batteries would also use the excess energy and be ready to go. That’s the issue hydrogen keeps running into. On paper it’s great while batteries relatively suck. In use it’s the opposite. Hydrogen gets all technical with transportation and use while batteries are much simpler.
Because hydrogen won’t require as much downtime for refueling versus charging?
Swap a battery with a charged one.
I’m playing devil’s advocate. Hydrogen is neat but has a lot of real world issues to overcome.
This!
From JCB’s point of view; they were looking for something that was as close to a direct swap-in for their diesel engines, as possible.
Metal hydride hydrogen storage would be good for a construction site where the downside that it is heavy does not really matter. Full when delivered.
“if you’ve got a solar plant that generates excess energy you can fuel up the on-site forklift and backhoe and whatever else.”
That would be a LOT of “excess” energy. I can’t imagine a scenario where a renewable energy farm is built that would generate such copious amounts of excess power that isn’t either hooked up to the grid to sell that surplus power to distant customers that CAN use it or has a battery to store that surplus energy for later use in a far more efficient manner.
Solar pricing goes negative (IE, you’re having to pay customers to use your power) fairly often in some markets – in those cases there is literally nowhere for the surplus to go. Lots of takes across lots of ideologies, so I’d encourage you to do your own googling.
As more solar continues to be built to handle average loads, the right-hand side of the curve – where supply exceeds demand – will likewise grow, and hydrogen production becomes a viable way of offloading it.
The infrastructure needed to generate hydrogen from surplus power isn’t free either. And its a LOT less efficient than just storing that surplus energy as heat or electricity. Here, I even Googled it for you:
“The technology to convert power to hydrogen and back to power has a round-trip efficiency of 18%-46%, according to data that Flora presented from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and scientific journal Nature Energy.”
https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2021/6/hydrogen-technology-faces-efficiency-disadvantage-in-power-storage-race-65162028
The high end of that estimate I would assume would require a hydrogen fuel cell which typically claim about 63% efficiency at turning hydrogen into electricity. This JCB engine running (I assume) on the Otto cycle. Otto cycle engines are at best half as efficient as fuel cells so I’d expect that round trip efficiency to be on the low end of that range.
So going with hydrogen you’re paying a lot of money to throw most of that surplus energy away anyway. There are far better ways to deal with excess renewables like feathering turbines, reorienting panels or just dumping excess power into a resistor if for whatever reason battery storage is not an option.
More likely though some data center somewhere will happily gobble up that surplus power like a hungry, hungry hippo.
Data center demand is somewhat inelastic, and most of them purchase from utilities, not from power plants. So a data center can’t just eat up the surplus; the surplus still has to go somewhere (the solar operators are, in effect, paying for baseline generation solutions to shut off and then come back on later, which is an expensive process, in order for the solar power to be placed onto the grid). Most big solar plants do not have motors for their panels (given the proximity to sand for most plants, this makes sense).
Infrastructure isn’t free, but in order for renewables to address the average case, the right-hand side (Excess generation) needs somewhere to go. Given the economic bias toward optimization, it’ll eventually go toward something that isn’t costing the operators money; whether that’s on-site hydrogen generation, a secondary market in which on-demand/volatile AI becomes cheaper during such periods, flywheel spinning, or compressed-air energy storage solutions, remains to be seen.
Data centers are only one potential customer. Given how much power they use, how vital it is that power be uninterrupted and how much hostility they get by vacuuming up power from the grid it would make sense for them on numerous levels to have their own batteries which could be recharged using cheap surplus power and drained during times of high demand.
If not, well that hypothetical renewable power facility is hooked into the grid so there are thousands, maybe millions of potential customers.
If hydrogen is the best (or only sink) for that surplus power then that hydrogen is best utilized making steel and fertilizer, not to power equipment and certainly not to power cars. There are much better options for that.
Every milestone hydrogen claws through an angel gets its wings.
I only wonder what the space age tech boom would have done for hydrogen had public opinion not soured thanks to the second ranked airship accident in the state of new Jersey in in the 1930s
Using that as an excuse not to use hydrogen for energy storage is about as valid as boasting it is the most abundant element in the universe as a reason to use it. Both are pointless.
Even without getting into those issues hydrogen offers little and asks much. It’s a less efficient *solution* supported by the fossil fuel industry as a way to get the world to use more fossil fuels to do the same work.
Rad. So rad.
I wouldn’t call 5% faster “obliterated”. If the Celtics beat the lakers 105 to 100, it would be pretty close.
It depends on how incremental the gains to be made are. Usain Bolt’s 100m world record time is a less than 2% reduction in the previous long(ish) standing record for example.
Each additional percent is exponentially more difficult.
I’m not sure it’s fair to compare a basketball game to a speed record. Yes, it’s 5 percent faster, but there’s a ridiculous amount of work involved in that 5 percent.
Mercedes, love your reporting from Bonneville and I’m so happy you got to witness that wonderful scene. Also amazing to witness a 300-plus run on the salt, yes? I’m looking forward to more.
My first thought was cubed or crushed ice but then my mind wandered as it often does and told me maybe dry ice would be better as it is colder and may need less to cool the engines and drop some weight. Water is some heavy stuff. I wonder why they don’t set up cameras along the strip to actually get the whole record breaking performance
Minor editor-for-free note: “By stapping iceboxes to the car…” You missed an ‘r’.
I’ve gotten to play with JCB diesel engines from 2022 – 2025 in machines used in the utilities field. The emissions were clean enough that we could run them indoors for a while while working on them during the winters.
Much cleaner diesels than some of the older diesel trucks at that shop.
Do they require DEF and other troublesome diesel stuff? I may have missed it in my read.
The ones I worked with in the utility industry required DEF. But they were nice to be able to run indoors during the winters during testing and certification of the equipment when needed.
Of course, hydrogen would have been even better.
Cool stuff! If we want to fully decarbonize hydrogen seems like it will have to be part of our future. But dang is it going to be a pain in the ass. When you get into very large and heavy machines (large mobile construction/mining equipment, long haul aircraft, etc.) there’s really no battery tech on the horizon for the next 50-100 years that will allow you to get the endurance needed, so some sort of more energy dense power source will be needed. The only issue is that making it in a low-carbon way involves a ton of low-carbon electricity, which we don’t quite have yet.
I think the long-term vision is that a lot of our natural gas infrastructure will one day be replaced with H2 infrastructure, allowing us to operate long haul trucks, generators (ICE and gas turbine), construction vehicles, and aircraft on the stuff. But there’s A LOT of commercial challenges to solve first.
Well considering ships are the worst pollution by far I think we can get cleaner by cleaning the hogs rather than the cats or preening birds.
Exactly this. I’ve long thought that hydrogen will be a better short-term implement for most of the uses where diesel fuel is the current go-to. On an 18-wheeler, electric motors and batteries are perfectly capable. But, there’s a 5k-10k pound weight penalty for the EV vs a sub-1k pound penalty for the hydrogen, and that’s a big difference when you’re operating a legally weight-limited vehicle.
I don’t know about piping H2 all over the place – it’s so hard to contain. But, that doesn’t mean the innovation can’t happen.
In all of the challenges to hydrogen piping it is probably the least problematic. From what I have read H2 can be moved through existing NG pipelines as a mixture of H2 and NG with only minor modification to the infrastructure.
Huh… I wonder if it is possible to electrolize methane such that you produce H2 + complex hydrocarbons instead of CO2…
That way you could turn methane emissions into hydrogen fuel and say, plastic feedstock instead of greenhouse gases
Ever since reading about BMW’s Hydrogen E38 decades ago (the 750hL, cheekily), I’ve hoped that someone, anyone, would champion hydrogen internal combustion so that we could still enjoy our engines in a potentially fossil-fuel-less future. Would not have guessed it would be a construction equipment manufacturer, but, no complaints here! Did they give you any indication on why the went internal combustion instead of fuel cell? There must be a huge cost differential.
It seems that, with a sufficiently remote and long-term project, with good access to water, a larger solar array could be erected, negating the need to haul in any fuel. Neat stuff.
They wanted a powertrain system that worked like diesel, was cost-effective to build, could use existing transmissions, and had some parts commonality with engines they already had in production. In the early days of development, fuel cell designs were tested, but they had high failure rates in construction environments.
Imagine that the experts considered other options and came to the right conclusion. Lol
Props for having that in your saddlebag
Hydrogen internal combustion is the cheap way to get a carbon neutral vehicle but it has a huge downside and that is efficiency. With H2 ICE you basically only get 1/2 the fuel efficiency of a fuel cell. With the cost of H2 that is a huge factor
For now
There is no “for now”. There is zero chance an H2 ICE competes with a H2 fuel cell on efficiency. H2 ICE is trading a cheaper upfront cost for a 2x higher fuel bill for the life of the equipment.
The idea of having so much excess electricity that we can turn it into H2 is pie in the sky thinking and ignores the problem of transporting H2.
Well unless you can get every piece of equipment to use the same size fuel cell and make it big enough for the hungriest machines pumping into a tank has a wider range of performance.
Also as we have seen we have solar farms in the desert being shut down halfway through the expected life time because they aren’t cost efficient. Plus unless the farms and the project has the same life expectancy you either run out of power before you are done or you are done and have a remote solar farm that you can’t use til it’s done. And then you have a solar farm to clean up
Think of those outback mining towns in Australia where they fly employees in because they’re so far away from cities. I bet it’s not cheap to truck in fuel there. A few truckloads of solar panels instead and you’re breaking even pretty quickly.
I think 74 to 800 may be the biggest power upgrade for an engine I’ve ever heard of.
The BMW M10 engine debuted with around 80 hp and was eventually developed into the M12 turbo version for F1 making around 1,400 hp. Does that count?
Depends. Any parts commonality between the 80hp version and the 1,400hp version?
Maybe stock crankshaft needs to be the requirement for this game?
Good point these guys had the excellent idea of use the parts bin as much as possible. Probably saved a fortune
My understanding is that yes. The M12 is alleged to use the exact same 1.5L cast iron block as the M10. Idk about any other part.
They sourced used blocks from road cars to use for them as they had been fully stress relieved by running them in a car
Creative engineering at its finest. That’s awesome.
I think this is, in fact, where hydrogen can shine. I think if all the propane forklifts and small construction machinery that would be so much better with H2. And it dodges most of the things that suck like energy density, fueling time (since you’d swap tanks) and distribution.
There is the small problem that H2 is 10x the cost of propane when factoring in energy density.
I mean… the real elephant in the room is that no H2 is being produced by electrolysis. The long term promise is splitting water with loads of excess energy. We may have even had a chance to get a little closer to this until everyone and their uncle needed their own petawatt data center.
Yeah, as long as it’s being cracked from dead dinos* it’s all a tech demo.
*I know it’s not actually dinosaurs, but plant matter.
The collapse of the dot ai bubble will herald a Renaissance of excess power!
Using electricity to split water using electrolysis is massively expensive. Then the H2 has to be be supercooled and liquified for transport.
It also doesn’t deal with the efficiency issue. If electricity is your source of H2 you can power a BEV 4 miles for every 1 mile you can power an H2 ICE.
Forklifts are a specific use case where EV tech would be better – there have been simple lead-acid battery forklifts for decades, adapting them for a high-use/high uptime scenario would just be a matter of swapping in a more sophisticated battery with a fast charger that can refill it during operator breaks and lunches.
I don’t know a lot about forklift tech, and I bet there is someone on this site that could give some good insights into the pros/cons of powering forklifts in different ways.
What I do know, though, is that there is a division of Toyota’s forklift group that setup near me in the last year of two to work on fuel cell tech for material moving AND there is a company that builds portable/semi-portable hydrogen stations to fill your hydrogen material moving equipment (like, drop the big trailer off outside of your Amazon warehouse, plug it in, and you’re off). So yeah, it’s already happening to some extent. I just don’t know what stage of development they are in.