The hydrogen car of the British construction equipment manufacturer accelerated through the salt desert to 653 km/h

A JCB car set a world speed record for hydrogen fuel transport — 653.9 km/h. Behind the wheel sat a pilot who, twenty years earlier, had already driven a diesel car from the same manufacturer across the same Lake Bonneville.

How it happened

The record race took place on dry Lake Bonneville in Utah — a place where land speed records have been set for centuries. The car's name is JCB Hydromax, and according to FIA regulations it was required to go through two runs in opposite directions within an hour — this eliminates the influence of wind and slope of the track, notes xrust.

The first run gave 400.623 mph (644.7 km/h), the second — 412.135 mph (663.3 km/h). The average speed over the two runs was 406.320 mph, or 653.909 km/h. It is this figure that will be included in the protocol as a new record — however, it is still preliminary: the final confirmation must be given by the FIA, the international motor sport federation.

The previous record for cars with a hydrogen internal combustion engine stood for more than twenty years and belonged to the BMW H2R — only 185.5 miles per hour (about 298 km/h). JCB not only beat it, but more than doubled it. At the same time, the British also surpassed the record for hydrogen fuel cell cars (303 mph) — that is, the Hydromax is now the fastest hydrogen car in principle, regardless of how exactly it uses this fuel.

Motors from excavators

This is where the whole point of history lies. Hydromax is a 10-meter twin-engine car with a total power of 1600 horsepower. But the engines themselves are not some exotic racing development, but serial power units that JCB installs in its regular construction equipment: excavators, loaders, tractors. They were simply adapted to burn hydrogen instead of diesel and assembled at the company's plant in Foston, Derbyshire.

For JCB, this is not a publicity stunt for the sake of a beautiful figure, but part of a much more pragmatic story. The concern has been investing in the hydrogen program for several years now — according to the company’s own estimates, about 100 million pounds have been spent on it (at the current exchange rate this is about 10 billion rubles). The idea is simple: if a hydrogen engine can accelerate a 10-meter car to 650 km/h, then it will definitely cope with work on a construction site — and at the same time it will not emit carbon dioxide from the exhaust pipe.

The initiator of the record-breaking venture was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of JCB, Lord Anthony Bamford. He recalls that the idea to come to the lake with a hydrogen car came to him more than a year ago — as a kind of continuation of the family history of the company.

Deja vu on the salt lake

And this continuation is literal. Twenty years ago, in August 2006, on the same lake, the same concern set a speed record for diesel cars — then the JCB Dieselmax car accelerated to 350.092 miles per hour. The driver was RAF pilot Andy Green.

Now Green, the same pilot who was the first in history to overcome the sound barrier on land in 1997 in the Thrust SSC, has also been entrusted with Hydromax. And he also surpassed his own achievement of twenty years ago with a new record: diesel 350 miles per hour versus the current 406 on hydrogen. According to Green himself, the car behaved “stable, powerful and fast,” and he called Bonneville the “spiritual homeland” of land speed records.

Why is this even necessary

A skeptical question arises by itself: who needs a record for the sake of a record, if such speeds are still unattainable on public roads. But behind the beautiful figure there is a very specific marketing calculation.

Hydrogen technologies in heavy equipment are now competing with two alternatives: electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. The former have problems with the weight of batteries and charging time, while the latter have problems with the high cost and complexity of the infrastructure. A hydrogen internal combustion engine is essentially a slightly modified diesel engine that can perform almost the same way, only without CO2 emissions from the pipe. For the construction and agricultural machinery industry, where machines work around the clock on remote sites, this may be a more practical solution than electric mobility.

The record on the lake in this sense works as public proof: if the engine from an ordinary excavator without exotic modifications is able to accelerate the car to a speed comparable to a Formula 1 racing car (the upper limit there is about 350–370 km/h), then the technology ripe not only for laboratory benches.

Sources:
forbes.com
fia.com
racer.com

Xrust The hydrogen car of the British manufacturer of construction equipment accelerated through the salt desert to 653 km/h