The story of a powerful partnership: Extreme H, GeoPura and Siemens
The Scottish Highlands, the Greenland Tundra, the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Senegalese coastline in the footsteps of the legendary Paris-Dakar Rally…For 4 seasons, Extreme E racecars, driven by a female-male duo, created the first gender-equal motorsport format in the world. And it was edge-of-your-seat thrilling, to say the least.
But Extreme E which has transformed to Extreme H is much more than a pretty race to watch on Sunday afternoons, it is a motorsport with principle — racing to the most remote corners of the planet to prove a point. Everyone involved works together to put clean energy, equality, sustainability, and, today as Extreme H, green hydrogen on the map.
Pioneering the future of sustainable motorsports together
Insiders will be the first to tell you that the world of motorsports is an excellent technology accelerator. Everything from carbon fiber and active suspensions to paddle shifters, steering wheel buttons and energy recovery systems have their innovative roots in F1 and other high-tech motorsports.
“In motorsports, your next deadline is your next race. That gives us a great opportunity to advance technology much faster than a road car,” says Mark Grain, Technical Director, Extreme H. “Motorsport has got a history of demonstrating and pushing forward new technologies. This is a great opportunity for us to do the same with hydrogen. We want to get out racing with it, and we want to show people that it’s a strong option for the future.”
Driving the green hydrogen transition in motorsports
With a career track record spanning almost three decades in FI and Indy with McLaren Racing, you can certainly take Mark Grain’s word on innovation in motorsports as the gold standard. But was just developing a fly race car that runs on hydrogen enough in this day and age? Obviously not.
“Hydrogen fuel cells offer a remarkable opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint and promote clean energy solutions, and we are proud to lead this charge with Extreme H…Our evolution to Extreme H makes us the first-ever testbed of hydrogen technology in motorsports – not only in our racing cars, but also transportation, infrastructure, refueling processes and safety regulations. It’s a ground-breaking initiative,” says Alejandro Agag, CEO, Extreme H.
The visionary team behind Formula E, Extreme E and now Extreme H, including founder and CEO Alejandro Agag as well as Managing Director Ali Russell, knew they had a platform for change right in front of them. And they wanted to do more…
“Motorsport has got a history of demonstrating and pushing forward new technologies. This is a great opportunity for us to do the same with hydrogen. We want to get out racing with it, and we want to show people that it’s a strong option for the future.”
Mark Grain, Technical Director, Extreme H
More than a sustainable green energy source
Extreme E opened the door to enormous possibilities. The idea of equality between male and female drivers. The idea of the onsite legacy programs to increase local social impact post-race and beyond. The scientific committee….and probably most importantly, putting green hydrogen on the clean energy map.
“Over the past five years of Extreme E, we’ve always used hydrogen. We actually created our own green hydrogen onsite using solar and water. In these remote areas where you can’t easily just plug into the grid, we needed to find our own self-sufficient renewable power source,” explains Julia Wall-Clarke, Director of Communications and Impact, Extreme H. “At our last event, we powered 80% of the race site using hydrogen. We are completely transforming the series from Extreme E to Extreme H to become 100% hydrogen-energy sourced. We’re looking forward to putting hydrogen on the map.”
“We have always had purpose at the heart. So, what we tried to do was to show how motorsports could react to the challenge that we all have, which is climate change. And that narrative is as important today as it was five years ago when we started,” states Ali Russell, Managing Director, Extreme H .
“They say 10 years of R&D is equivalent to one year in racing. How do we take that embryo of an idea and use that to advanced hydrogen technology,” adds Ali Russell. “Hydrogen is no different than the challenge that we had with electrification. There are many challenges, but they’re all solvable if you have a pragmatic attitude. One of the biggest challenges is the fact that the perception of hydrogen is ‘it’s dangerous’. We’ve got to take a standing point and show people that it works in these really harsh environments.”
Putting safety on the hydrogen map
Taking a stand on hydrogen safety meant finding the right partners and experts to help. This is where the team at Extreme H turned to Siemens, Siemen Energy and the hydrogen energy experts at the scale-up GeoPura.
Explains James Taylor, Chief Championship Officer, Extreme H, “At Extreme H, we’re obviously very focused on safety. Therefore, we’re working side by side with Siemens and GeoPura, our trusted partners on absolutely every element of our safety, particularly with a focus on the hydrogen side of things. Everything we do is thought through thoroughly.”
Working with the FIA, the world’s governing board of motorsports, and local government organizations regarding overall hydrogen safety during the race and onsite was new territory for Extreme H, requiring the utmost attention to detail. Siemens and GeoPura provided expertise and experience with local regulations and best practices when it came to hydrogen logistics, supply chain and other processes. Concerning the car itself, the team worked closely with the FIA and the vehicle successfully passed mandatory FIA crash tests, which are very severe.
“We have a very safe racing car with a very safe system. In the event of a catastrophic accident or a failure, we wanted to understand exactly what would happen to the hydrogen. It travels literally at supersonic speeds, so we wanted to be able to map that,” states Mark Grain. “It’s quite a complex project, and that’s where the Siemens engineering team came in, and they completed the CFD work. It’s given us the confidence to allow us to go racing.”
“Siemens are a great partner of ours. Not only have they got a lot of experience and history already in the hydrogen space, but they’ve also got a lot of motor racing connections as well, and that’s something that has really been a benefit to us.”
The power of partnership: Extreme H, GeoPura and Siemens
Besides experts from Siemens and Siemens Energy, a spin-off of Siemens, the team at Extreme H turned to a visionary scale-up, GeoPura. GeoPura, based in Newcastle (UK) specializes in zero emission fuels, green hydrogen generation and hydrogen power technology.
“It’s been interesting working with GeoPura and Siemens. The companies are very much at the forefront of hydrogen technology,” explains Ali Russell. “Our challenge runs right through the whole supply chain of hydrogen: the production of hydrogen, the storage, transportation, the refueling, the safety, the propulsion and performance in vehicles, the fuel cell and the software that integrates it. When it comes to hydrogen, there’s a lot of points to consider.”
Talk is great but walking the talk is even better. And that is where the practical, no-nonsense approach of Extreme H site manager and a true zero-emission energy pioneer in racing Andy Welch steps into the picture. With over a decade of experience providing low-emission and zero-emission energy for race cars and race sites (and coming from the world of motorsports prior to that) Andy Welch, Global Hydrogen Development Manager, knew he was onto something when GeoPura appeared on the scene.
“The brief is still the same. To take the event entirely off traditional forms of powering temporary events. It’s just that the proportion of energy from hydrogen has increased. We started in season one with a 40-kilowatt fuel cell system. We were just under a 200-kilowatt fuel cell system in 2023. We used the GeoPura system as our main fuel cell for that event. And we’re now talking about a 500-kilowatt fuel cell system,” explains Andy Welch, Global Hydrogen Development Manager, Extreme H.
“GeoPura is someone to throw the problem to. ‘We’re going to take 10 cars. They’re going to refuel four times during the day. They’ve got this size tank. We’re going to be in an ambient temperature of 40 degrees. We’re going to be at such-and-such altitude. What do we need? It’s having that comfort of a technical partner who understands our needs.”
And understanding needs in the holistic sense of hydrogen propulsion, green hydrogen conversion and all the logistics, storage and procurement and safety processes – well one can imagine that is a pretty small (if not growing) club of experts. And one of those experts that Extreme H and Siemens counted on was Theo Elmer, the CTO of GeoPura.
The gurus of green hydrogen
GeoPura, incorporated in 2019, provides scalable clean power, in the form of green hydrogen energy. As one of the UK’s leading green hydrogen producers, GeoPura provided expert consultancy in the development of the series’ car and transition to hydrogen power. The relationship with Extreme E, now Extreme H, developed organically over the years. And the scope of what GeoPura supports with Extreme H and the budding hydrogen energy industry as a whole has widened.
“We bring clients zero-emission kilowatt hours of electricity, and that’s backed by renewable energy. In a sense, it’s renewable energy in a box — as much clean energy as you want, wherever you want it,” explains Theo Elmer, CTO, GeoPura.
GeoPura offers an end-to-end fuel ecosystem, covering not only the energy and production itself, but all the hardware, software, logistics, and expert teams that make green hydrogen energy happen.
“On one side of the equation, we have hydrogen production. We produce our own green hydrogen from renewable energy using electrolysis. We then compress it and store it in tube trailers. These assets are then driven to where the renewable energy is needed. It’s then put back through a hydrogen power unit to make zero-emission electricity,” explains Theo Elmer.
The uses of green hydrogen energy are numerous. For example, if there was a large amount of excess solar or wind in Scotland or some other remote location, one could make green hydrogen there, store it and later transport it to where a large quantity of renewable energy was required. Onsite, a GeoPura HPU converts the green hydrogen to zero-emission energy.
“Our power units have been used for many different applications — ultimately anywhere that needs 400-volt, three-phase power. We worked on festivals, like the Isle of Wight and Goodwood Festival of Speed, construction sites, film and TV sets, large-scale EV charging, data centers and obviously the Extreme E and now Extreme H races,” explains Theo Elmer.
In a sense, it’s renewable energy in a box — as much clean energy as you want, wherever you want it.
Theo Elmer, CTO, GeoPura
“Hydrogen, in the way that we use it, is in its gaseous form. And hydrogen, like any fuel, needs to be correctly managed and maintained to be safe. Hydrogen just needs to be looked after and cared for, like any other fuel, so that you don’t have health and safety issues.” He emphasizes, “Hydrogen is safe if it’s correctly managed and maintained.”
The many facets of the Siemens and GeoPura partnership
With serious experience in the hydrogen energy ecosystem, it makes sense that Siemens Energy is a collaborative partner as well as the contract manufacturer in Newcastle for GeoPura’s equipment. GeoPura remains the owner of all the IP and engineering of their HPU. The partnership with Siemens itself tends to the software side of things.
“Siemens software solutions are vast and that’s what’s so great about it. It’s a huge portfolio and you can pick and choose, depending on your project and what you need. You know the product is going to be good and you know the support is going to be excellent. You also know that it’s going to have global recognition and very high standards and quality,” states Theo Elmer.
“Two key areas that we’ve used Siemens software products are in the PLCs and controls of our hydrogen power units. All of our hardware is controlled by Siemens PLCs and the related software environment for programming and remote access. Secondly, and that’s more linked with the Extreme H project is the Siemens software which we used for the computational fluid dynamics.”
What the team wanted to understand was something only a digital twin could do safely so, along with the help of experts from Siemens Simcenter Engineering and Consulting Services, they modeled the car in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, under various crash and possible leak conditions.
“What if the Extreme H car was to have a collision or something was to go wrong? What would the hydrogen gas plumes look like in reality?” explains Theo Elmer. “The Siemens Simcenter CFD software allowed us to very accurately model what that looks like.”
“It’s been really great working with the guys from Simcenter Engineering Services on this project.”
Theo Elmer, CTO, GeoPura
The project itself wasn’t straightforward. The team worked with a very accurate CAD model of the Extreme H car provided by Spark Racing Technology, the original designer. This was then imported into the Simcenter environment and the team at GeoPura set the boundary conditions as to what each leak condition might look like.
“We were able to do that because we understood in a real-world environment what possible leak scenarios might be. Then the Simcenter engineers at Siemens were able to take all of that data and model those possible leak scenarios to validate the safety concept of the car.” Adds Theo Elmer, “CFD modeling of hydrogen is actually very challenging due to the physical properties of hydrogen and there’s not that many people out there with the capability to do it accurately.”
Future design optimization of the fuel cell
In the future, the team hopes there will be a parallel project based on Simcenter systems solutions, like Simcenter Amesim, looking at hydrogen vehicle drivetrains and optimization of storage capacity, battery chemistry and the four-wheel-drive power system.
“Hydrogen has massive, massive potential as the reservoir for our renewable energy generation. When you have huge peaks in generation or dips when power is not sufficient to meet users’ needs, hydrogen will be the reservoir for long-term sustainable storage,” concludes Theo Elmer.
“We want to show that green technology can be sexy, that there is hope, that we can evolve, that we can change, and that we can work more collaboratively together and actually change the planet moving forward.”
Ali Russell, Managing Director, Extreme H
The inaugural race of the FIA Extreme H World Cup is set to take place in Qiddiya City, Saudi Arabia (close to the stunning Tuwaiq Mountains) from 4-11 October 2025. www.fiaextremeh.com
