Electric vehicles seem to have taken front and center stage for a few years now, but customers are not as on board as they were meant to be, and so many car companies, especially those like Porsche, who are known for their high-performing cars, are looking for greener alternatives that will satisfy customers and lawmakers alike and that will uphold their reputation. One of the main alternatives for these companies is hydrogen engines, as they are also clean energy and can deliver a lot of power, if you know what you are doing.
Luckily for Porsche, they are not newcomers to this high performance game and they can apply all their learned skills about how to extract as much fun and power from an engine as possible, but the electric vehicle and hybrid engine space also has some very stiff competitors like Tesla that are nipping at their heels and have made the competition stiffer. Despite this, Porsche has managed to create a new engine that will likely blow expectations out of the water.
The new Porsche hydrogen engine that will push the company into the future
Although they have been experimenting with many iterations of different engines in the past few years, this new cutting-edge hydrogen engine could open up new possibilities in alternative powertrain tech. Unlike other hydrogen engines on the market, this one is an advanced fuel-cell system powerful enough to compete with traditional gas engines, as that is one of the main draws to the German company, speed. This new engine is so good and so competitive that it can even compete with a 4.4-liter V8, and do so while being emission-free.
It is tempting to discount these new hydrogen engines as just the transition phase into electric technology, but that could not be further from the truth. There is a very big reason that it is gaining traction, and that is that it can provide enough power to move heavier-duty vehicles and even planes. Since hydrogen is not a finite resource, can be transported in a more traditional manner to “gas stations” around the world and it is also not a contaminant, the drawbacks of making it one of the main ways to fuel a car are not that many.
But the technology still has a long way to go, as hydrogen engines today are quite bulky and better suited for the heavy duty machinery they power. Well, until now. Porsche’s hydrogen concept manages to be compact enough to fit in the kind of tight engine bays found in sports cars without compromising on performance or luxury. And this is not a test, Porsche is gearing up to make this engine into one of their road marvels.
In a 2022 report from the company, they explained “Different powertrain solutions, including hybrid systems, electric drives and efficient combustion engines are currently all being developed in parallel for use in future vehicles. Hydrogen represents a potential alternative to conventional fuels or synthetic fuels (e-fuels) for use in combustion engines. This was examined as part of a study on the subject by Porsche Engineering.”
The important thing is to adapt before the legislation catches up, as right now the main problem all car companies are running into is lack of infrastructure to support new fuel types, and this needs investment before it becomes a necessity and consumers are left without options, no gas because it is a contaminant, no electric because it is too far away and not hydrogen because it is too expensive and finicky to transport.
This requires collaboration withing the industry, which is unprecedented, as going at it alone will not solve the issues. It is simply unaffordable for one company to be the one to make all the changes necessary, but as an industry shift, we could be looking at the new transport technology.