A hydrogen fuel cell powered Hyundai Nexo has set a new long distance driving record. From civilisation (or its rough equivalent in ‘Straya) all the way to the outback.

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Hyundai-conscripted low-key rally ace Brendan Reeves abandoned his Nexo just outside Silverton, which is of course where they shot Mad Max 2 all those years ago. Which is just outside Broken Hill, birthplace of BHP, which is well and truly outside anything that could be construed as cultured. Out there, asking to see the wine list, generally doesn’t end well.

This is properly brave stuff. Like, Brendo left a perfectly serviceable capital city (Melbourne) which is arguably Australia’s most civilised city (that’s kinda like saying ‘the world’s best prison dining experience’) anyway, he drove an incredible 887.5 kilometres.

In doing so he - and by ‘he’ I mean ‘the car’ - managed to turn 6.27 kilos of hydrogen gas into about 60 litres of water, by recombining it with atmospheric oxygen, deep inside the bowels of the fuel cell. Which is kinda how fuel cells roll in order to make electricity to power the vehicle, in this case through a cultural void.

Brendo’s effort, averaging a staggering 66.9 kilometres per hour for 13 straight hours, eclipses a French dude’s previous record, also in a Nexo, of 778 kilometres, between two unpronouceable wine and fois gras hotspots, up north.

The low speed, of course, is simply to reduce aerodynamic drag and boost range. The car can go faster than that, obviously.

“During the trip the NEXO consumed a total of 6.27kg of hydrogen, at a rate of 0.706kg/100km. It purified 449,100 litres of air on the journey - enough for 33 adults to breathe in a day - its plastic exhaust pipe emitting only water throughout the trip. It emitted zero CO2, where a standard Internal Combustion Engine vehicle would have emitted about 126kg of CO2 over the same distance.”

Dudes from Hyundai there. Personally I wouldn’t want to be among the 33 adults in a room testing all that purified air, verifying that hypothesis - it is kinda depleted of oxygen, after all. Maybe it’d be OK. I just don’t want to be that particular lab rat.

I did ask them about this alleged purification, because I had my doubts, up front, but apparently it is a true and valid claim.

Nexo does suck atmospheric oxygen gas out of the air, but only after passing through some pretty advanced filtration in three stages designed to remove ultra-fine PM2.5s as well as sulphur-oxide and nitrogen-oxide gasses - apparently these are retained and not just pooped out the back, en route.

So the vehicle itself is something of an air purifier. Confirmed!

Officially the Nexo has an official range of 666 kilometres, based on the WLTP cycle, and which you can ‘game’ just the same as in a hydrocarbon-powered car, if you use hyper-miling driving techniques. Pump up the tyres, drive slow and gentle, kind of thing. I’ve driven from Darwin to Adelaide twice, like that. It’s just like a valium overdose that never ends, subjectively.

Independent oversight of the test was provided by the RACV, which sealed the tank in what could loosely be described as ‘civilisation’ at Essendon. And the seal integrity was verified against a backdrop of duelling banjos, creekside, by the NRMA. But everyone got out alive, mostly.

So, look, what this demonstrates is that Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles like the Nexo can literally go the distance. And if there were refuelling infrastructure in place at places like Broken Hill, you could refuel in 3-5 minutes and head home - before the locals or the venomous reptiles, or melanoma, or dehydration, or heat stroke, gets you. So that’s nice.

And this is the fundamental problem with hydrogen. There’s no infrastructure. And how you produce the hydrogen really matters - I discuss that in the video in detail.