SEOUL - Hyundai is set to make hydrogen-powered motoring somewhat more exciting, with the imminent reveal of a new FCEV sports car concept.
The new two-door is set to make its debut on 7 September, and we already know that it can pull off a decent drift thanks to a brief clip in the teaser video.
Although Hyundai isn’t saying much else about the hydrogen powered sports car for now, Hyundai’s R&D head Albert Biermann dropped a few hints earlier this year, CarsGuide reports.
“we’re working on a rolling lab project, actually, where we have a high-power battery powertrain combined with a fuel cell, and in this set-up, the fuel cell adds, of course, to the power, but also to the range of the vehicle,” Biermann told the media back in April.
He added that it was a “nice challenge” for Hyundai’s engineers to squeeze a fuel cell stack and a high-performance battery electric powertrain into a sportscar.
Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles have yet to achieve any kind of mass market appeal as most carmakers have chosen to prioritise plug-in battery-electric vehicles, due to the high cost of hydrogen FCEV technology as well as a lack of refuelling infrastructure in most countries.
However, Hyundai and Toyota have both bucked the trend by bringing mass-produced models to market, Toyota with its Mirai and Hyundai with its Nexo FCEV. The latter broke the world record for the longest distance ever covered by a hydrogen car on a single tank (887.5km), in Australia earlier this year. However, barely a month later Toyota came and swept the accolade away, with a Mirai covering 1003km in Europe.
There’s no indication yet of whether the upcoming Hyundai FCEV sports car will actually go into production, but it will certainly add some sparkle to the hydrogen argument. We can’t wait to see it.
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