In this technical interview, we sat down with Camilo Wartenberg, Director for Latin America of H2 Grand Prix, to talk about how the hydrogen propulsion system that races in the H2 Grand Prix Pro (H2GP Pro) program actually works. The goal: to explain, with the level of detail a teacher or engineering student needs, the full path from the fuel cell to the electrolyzer that produces the fuel right in the school workshop.
The fuel cell: the car's hybrid heart
1. What exactly is H2 Grand Prix Pro, and what does a school or university that enrolls receive?
H2 Grand Prix Pro, or H2GP Pro, is Horizon Educational's hydrogen car racing program. It isn't just a competition — it's a complete engineering laboratory handed to each team. When a technical high school or university enrolls, it receives an RC car kit built at roughly one-tenth the scale of a real vehicle, with a chassis, motors, an RF controller, power electronics and, most importantly, a complete hydrogen fuel cell system. On top of that comes a benchtop electrolyzer that lets the team produce its own hydrogen right in the workshop or lab, without depending on anyone shipping it to them pre-bottled. It is, literally, a classroom-scale hydrogen power station.
2. You mentioned the car is a hybrid. What does it resemble in the real world?
Conceptually it works exactly like the hydrogen vehicles already on real roads, like the Toyota Mirai or the BMW iX5 Hydrogen: a system where the fuel cell doesn't replace the battery, but works alongside it. Within the H2GP Pro rulebook itself there's actually a category called Hybrid, where the team has to balance the power the fuel cell delivers against a battery and supercapacitors that absorb spikes in energy demand — for example when accelerating or coming out of a corner. That is exactly the same engineering problem that real hydrogen car manufacturers solve: the fuel cell delivers stable, continuous power, but a car needs instantaneous power spikes, and that's where the hybrid system comes in.
3. Let's talk about the heart of the system, the fuel cell. How does it work and what power does it deliver?
The fuel cell these vehicles use is a 30-watt PEM cell — proton exchange membrane. It's a stack of fourteen individual cells connected in series, very compact, delivering around 8.4 volts at 3.6 amps at its peak. The way it works is elegant: hydrogen goes in on one side, oxygen from the air goes in on the other, and inside the membrane a controlled electrochemical reaction splits the hydrogen into protons and electrons. The electrons are forced to travel through an external circuit — that's the electric current that drives the car — and at the end of the process, protons, electrons and oxygen recombine to form water as the only byproduct. There's no combustion, no carbon emissions, and the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe, if you can even call it that, is water vapor.
The hydrogen cycle: from electrolyzer to track
4. Besides the car, you mentioned they receive an electrolyzer. What is it, and how does it relate to the HydroFill?
The electrolyzer is the piece that closes the educational loop. The HydroFill is also a PEM-type electrolyzer, but it runs in reverse compared to the fuel cell: instead of combining hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, it takes electricity from the grid and distilled water, and uses that electricity to split the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen produced isn't stored as compressed gas at high pressure, which would be dangerous in a school workshop — instead it's loaded into metal hydride cylinders, among the smallest and most compact hydrogen cylinders that exist for educational use. These cylinders absorb the hydrogen in a solid state, inside the metal hydride's structure, at low pressure. That makes them extraordinarily safe: they're cylinders approved even for air transport under IATA regulations, something that would be unthinkable with a conventional compressed-gas cylinder. For students, this means they can manufacture, store and transport their own fuel inside the same school building, at a level of risk comparable to a rechargeable battery.
HydroFill's metal hydride cylinders are approved for air transport under IATA regulations — a level of safety unthinkable with conventional compressed hydrogen, and comparable to a rechargeable battery.
5. How does this connect to what students learn about electrolysis?
That's where the program's real pedagogical value lies: students see both sides of the same chemical reaction working on the same workbench. Through electrolysis, they learn to split the water molecule, H₂O, into its two components — hydrogen at the cathode and oxygen at the anode — using electric current. Then, in the fuel cell, they see exactly the reverse reaction: hydrogen and oxygen recombine to release that same energy as electricity, plus water as a byproduct. It isn't a theory class about the hydrogen cycle — it's the hydrogen cycle happening physically in front of them, with instruments they assemble, test and tune themselves.
Race engineering: weight, aerodynamics and energy management
6. Beyond the chemistry, what engineering concepts do teams apply to improve the car?
That's where the program becomes a real engineering project and not just a lab experiment. Teams have to solve the same kinds of decisions any automotive engineer faces: where to place the fuel cell and the hydrogen cylinder to get the right weight distribution between the axles, how to reduce the bodywork's aerodynamic drag, what gear ratio to use to balance torque and top speed, and how to electronically manage the power split between the fuel cell and the battery so as not to waste hydrogen on stretches where maximum power isn't needed. Every extra gram of hydrogen they burn means one more pit stop, and every pit stop means lost time on track. So they end up optimizing the car not just to be fast, but to be energy-efficient — which is exactly the same challenge the hydrogen automotive industry faces today at full scale.
7. And on the track — how does the race itself, the competition format, work?
The format is endurance-style, like the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The official H2GP Pro rulebook allows races of between two and six hours — the World Final runs six — and in the Latin American editions we coordinate, we typically race a four-hour continuous format. It isn't the fastest car on a single hot lap that wins — it's the team that completes the most laps within that time. That completely changes the strategy: a car can be very fast, but if it burns too much hydrogen and has to pit more often to refuel, it ends up losing to a slower but more efficient car that spends less time stopped. It's exactly the same logic that governs real endurance racing: fuel management, thermal management of the system, pit-stop planning and consistency over hours, not just top speed. That's why H2GP Pro ends up being, in practice, an intensive course in energy systems engineering applied to a real vehicle — just at the scale of a workbench and a technical high school.
The program on the track: H2 Grand Prix Chile 2024
The following video, recorded by the Districalc team, shows Chilean teams competing at H2 Grand Prix Chile 2024 — from pit-lane setup to on-track action.
Does your school want to compete in H2 Grand Prix Pro?
Districalc distributes the H2GP Pro kits and the HydroFill electrolyzer across Latin America, and supports technical high schools and universities from enrollment all the way to the track. Contact us to bring this hydrogen engineering lab to your institution.
Contact UsReferences
- Horizon Educational. H2GP Pro — Technical Specifications. Available at: h2grandprix.com
- International Air Transport Association (IATA). Dangerous Goods Regulations — provisions for metal hydride storage systems.
- Toyota Motor Corporation. Mirai Fuel Cell Technology Overview. Available at: toyota.com
- H2GP / Horizon Educational. Official H2GP Pro Rulebook — race format and duration. Available at: h2gp.org/programs/h2gp-pro