Extreme H Announced

From the Makers of Extreme E comes…Extreme H – but what is it?

Extreme E has announced that in 2024, a new spinoff Championship, Extreme H, will be launched. The brand-new Championship will race in the same locations as Extreme E on the same days and with the same sporting format.

Extreme E already travels to a number of locations across the world, from the ice sheets of Greenland to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, with the purpose of highlighting the changes brought to these regions by climate change and leaving behind a positive legacy project to help fight the climate crisis.

It has seen the likes of Carlos Sainz, Sebastien Loeb and Jutta Kleinschmidt join the racing series and Extreme H will be looking to provide these drivers – and a plethora of others – with a new and unique challenge in racing cars powered by hydrogen.

“Extreme E was designed to be a testbed for innovation and solutions for mobility. It has become increasingly clear to us that creating a hydrogen racing series is a natural evolution of our mission to showcase the possibilities of new technologies in the race to fight climate issues.” – Alejandro Agag.

Essentially, a hydrogen fuel cell will replace the battery that Extreme E uses and will be the main energy source for the Extreme H cars.

The Extreme H car will also retain the same chassis used in Extreme E. Green hydrogen sources will be used to power the Extreme H fuel cells, created using a combination of solar power and water.

Image: Extreme E Media Centre

This technology is already being used behind the scenes in Extreme E, where it provides the energy source to the vehicle’s batteries.

“For Extreme E to be evolving into Extreme H is incredibly exciting and a brilliant step forward in such a short space of time for the series. To see racing of this calibre powered by Hydrogen cells, which will allow for even more racing with less impact, is remarkable.” – Jenson Button, Team Principal of JBXE

There are two categories for the racing planned at the moment. The first is a full transition and the second is combined racing with both doing pretty much exactly what they say on the tin. Either way, as Alejandro alluded to, it’s a way to integrate hydrogen into the competition and promote innovation in the motorsport industry.

Development for the Extreme H vehicle is already underway, with goals to have a prototype launched in early 2023.

With Agag having birthed Formula E, Extreme E and E1 already, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that he’s decided to push the envelope even further this time and it’ll be exciting to watch this new racing series develop over the next couple of years and beyond.

Author: Thiemo Albers-Daly