Display More
The days of petrol-powered racing are numbered. As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the need to race with them is declining also. But electric racers… er, let’s just say they don’t match internal combustion yet.
Retaining the noise and spectacle of motorsport is therefore at forefront of organisers’ minds, with several options including synthetic fuels and hydrogen combustion being explored to replace petrol.
Cue SFH‘s superb recreation of the ‘Forze IX’ hydrogen endurance racer, which – being a fuel cell rather than combustion – solves precisely none of the noise and spectacle issues that plague electric motorsport. Oh.
But what a fuel cell does do is enable electric racing without the need for a giant heavy battery. A battery that requires recharging, taking hours to do so (or – as per early Formula E racing – changing cars half-way through the race, which was profoundly stupid), nor the mining of rare-earth metals to create it.
Able to refuel in roughly the same time as a petrol racing car, a hydrogen fuel cell allows for endurance racing without the need to blow-up dead dinosaurs. And that’s awesome.
It’s just not quite as awesome as blowing up the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which creates all of the noise of petrol, but none of the emissions. We know which we prefer.
https://thelegocarblog.com/2023/12/08/the-future-of-racing-kinda/