A striking new racing class will be added in a few years’ time: Extreme H. It will be a brother of the Extreme E, a championship where electrically powered off-roaders compete against each other in the roughest areas in the world. With Extreme H, the battery pack makes way for a fuel cell.
When driving fully electric, the focus is mostly on cars with a battery pack, but there are also many car manufacturers who see a future for fuel cells. To respond to this, a new racing championship will be added as of 2024: Extreme H. This will be a sister category of Extreme E and will use roughly the same cars and also run the same races on the same days. The organization is currently investigating the possibility of exchanging the battery pack for a fuel cell in existing cars and is also examining the extent to which Extreme H and Extreme E will coincide exactly during the race weekends.
Last year the first Extreme E Championship took place. In it, different teams drive against each other with rugged, basically identical electric terrain vehicles. A race is called an X-Prix and, just like at the Dakarrally, for example, it leads through quite inhospitable area. Last year there was driving in Greenland, in the desert in Saudi Arabia and in Chile. Every team gets a basic car to work with, last year that was the 540 hp strong and 1,650 kilo heavy Spark Oddyssey. It is up to the teams to fine-tune these and, of course, to use the electricity supply wisely, in their battle to win the races. Former F1 champion Nico Rosberg’s team won its first season with drivers Johan Kristoffersson and Molly Taylor.
One goal of Extreme E is to raise awareness about climate change in an environmentally friendly way, as well as to support race venues in a variety of ways.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl