Three participating student teams from the Netherlands are taking matters into their own hands, now that the annual Shell Eco-marathon race has recently been cancelled.
During their own organized competition, the Eco-Runner Team Delft, Green Team Twente, and HAN Hydromotive will compete for the title of ‘most efficient hydrogen city car’.
The competing teams are now working together towards the same goal: to emphasize the importance of hydrogen and sustainable mobility.
For one year, the students of the three teams put their studies on hold to carry out the design, construction and testing of these cars from A to Z. A lot of time and energy is invested to achieve the best possible result. “We started this year knowing that there was a possibility that the Shell Eco-marathon competition could not take place due to COVID-19.” says Reinout Sterk, Chief Engineer of the Eco-Runner team, “Nevertheless, we have always remained optimistic and have worked hard all year to develop our hydrogen city car and prepare it for a race against our opponents. Logically, but to our disappointment, the competition was canceled anyway.”
However, the students don’t stop there, “This crisis also brings us new opportunities and challenges, namely an alternative to end the year on a big note: we organize our own competition.” says Mart Nijkamp, Team Manager of Green Team Twente. “We will continue to work on this with all our might”. On Friday 11 June their ‘Hydrogen Efficiency Challenge’ will take
place at Circuit Park Berghem in the Netherlands. During this “Challenge” the three Dutch top teams will go neck and neck with their city cars to complete a track on as little hydrogen as possible; in other words, to achieve the title of the most efficient hydrogen-powered city car in the Netherlands. The students test the innovations they have applied over the past year in the field of hydrogen and car technology.
As no spectators can attend, the race will be publicly followed via a live blog, commented by sports commentator Allard Kalff. “In this way, the race can still be followed from a distance and we can still reach a large audience to draw attention to hydrogen and efficient mobility,” says Elisa Gerritsen, of HAN Hydromotive. Through their innovations, the teams want to show that there are still great strides to be made in making the mobility sector more sustainable. “We hope that in this way we can inspire young and old to think about fossil-free living.”
The live blog can be followed via: https://hydrogen-challenge.nl/
Additional information hydrogen
How does a hydrogen-powered car actually work? “In the fuel cell of the car, hydrogen from the storage tanks is combined with oxygen from the environment to produce electricity.” says Mats Steerneman, Fuel Cell Engineer, “This electricity is then used to drive the electric motors, with water as the only residual product. In addition, hydrogen is a very lightweight fuel and can be refueled in about 5 minutes, making it highly applicable in the mobility sector.” There are blogs about hydrogen on the Eco-Runner Team Delft website, they also have their own hydrogen podcast series and an explainer video about both hydrogen and the project.
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