The ECO-RUNNER XIII

wE successfully created the world's most efficient, hydrogen powered city car! Our most efficient car yet.

When designing and building the Eco XIII, our primary focus was finding the balance between being robust and efficient. The car needed to be efficient and reliable enough to reach our end goal of this year – to set the world record for the longest distance driven by a hydrogen-powered city car on a single tank of fuel!

To drive the 2056 kilometers needed for the world record, we focused on strengthening the Eco XIII’s chassis while ensuring that it does not unnecessarily become heavier, which would negatively impact efficiency. It is essential that the car is well-functioning while pushing the boundaries based on a balance of resistance, power, and construction. All the different designs developed by the various departments must be integrated to work together seamlessly.

The Eco-Runner XIII stands for the transition all cars need to make – cars need to become more efficient, whether driving on fossil fuels or not. The Eco XIII pushes the technical boundaries of this efficiency by making the car smaller, lighter, and more aerodynamic. An example is optimizing the car’s shape to decrease the aerodynamic drag and making a load-carrying structure that was as lightweight as possible without breaking.

Another factor of efficiency is limiting the energy losses within the car. These losses include rolling resistance and air drag, but also the losses that occur when converting hydrogen to electricity and converting electricity to kinetical energy (movement) in the electrical motor. To minimize these energy losses, we, among other things, optimized our powertrain system with a brand-new fuel cell tuned to our needs.

Learn more about our new car by watching the videos below, where we explain the innovations on our car in more detail.