GoKawiilIt’s been far too long since I’ve been able to report a new land speed record. For a while, it looked like Bloodhound might have been able to make good on its 1,000 mph (1,609 km/h) attempt, but then the money ran out. As a result, Thrust SSC’s two-way average of 763.6 mph (1,229 km/h), set in 1997, remains the fastest anyone has ever driven a wheeled vehicle over a timed mile. But yesterday, on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, a new record was set by the JCB Hydromax for hydrogen-powered cars.
JCB is a UK-based manufacturer of heavy industrial and agricultural equipment—think diggers, loaders, backhoes, tractors, and so on. And as JCB is based in the UK, it doesn’t have the luxury of being able to ignore carbon emissions targets; it has to have alternatives to diesel engines. For some products, that means switching to batteries, but the company has also been working with hydrogen. At first, that meant fuel cells, but after developing prototypes, JCB concluded the tech was too expensive and too fragile for life on the farm or the construction site. Instead, in 2020, the company started developing its own hydrogen combustion engine.
The idea of burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine has been tried before with little success. For example, in 2006, BMW modified a naturally aspirated V12 engine in a 7 Series to run on hydrogen, which it did, but with 60 percent of the power and five times the fuel consumption compared to gasoline. More recently, Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda has been among the drivers of an experimental hydrogen-burning Toyota Corolla in some Japanese endurance races. In this case, Toyota started with the GR Corolla’s turbocharged three-cylinder engine; the forced induction from the turbocharger made up somewhat for the reduced energy density of hydrogen.
JCB A cutaway of the JCB Hydromax A cutaway of the JCB Hydromax JCB JCB The crew working on the car on the salt flats. The crew working on the car on the salt flats. JCB JCB This is one of JCB’s hydrogen powered backhoe loaders. This is one of JCB’s hydrogen powered backhoe loaders. JCB The crew working on the car on the salt flats. JCB This is one of JCB’s hydrogen powered backhoe loaders. JCB
JCB decided to build an entirely new hydrogen engine, drawing on its experience developing diesel engines and sharing much of the engine architecture. Hydrogen is injected into the cylinders at much lower pressure and temperature than in a diesel engine, and a spark causes ignition. Like JCB’s diesels (and the Toyota hydrogen race car), the engine is turbocharged, and like a diesel, it runs at very low revs.