Toyota Motor president and CEO will participate in the Idemitsu 1500 Super Endurance 2022 (Thailand 25H Endurance Race) at the Chang International Circuit on December 17-18.
Morizo (Toyoda’s racing name) will drive for his Rookie Racing team that will send in two cars — the ORC Rookie GR Corolla H2 concept, a hydrogen engine vehicle, and the ORC Rookie GR86 CNF Concept, a carbon-neutral fuel vehicle.
The participation will not be for the entire 25-hours but will be for the first and last few hours of the race. This will be the first time for both vehicles to compete in a race outside of Japan.
In addition, one of the Toyota Gazoo Racing Team Thailand’s vehicles is also going to run on carbon neutral fuels. Starting with participation in the Thailand 25H Endurance Race, Rookie Racing and Toyota will further increase and accelerate development of carbon neutral technologies in Asia through motorsports.
The hydrogen engine generates power through the combustion of hydrogen using fuel supply and injection systems that have been modified from those used with gasoline engines. Except for the combustion of minute amounts of engine oil during driving, which is also the case with gasoline engines, hydrogen engines emit zero CO2 when in use.
Combustion in hydrogen engines occurs at a faster rate than in gasoline engines, resulting in a characteristic of good responsiveness. While having excellent environmental performance, hydrogen engines also have the potential to relay the fun of driving, through sound and vibrations.
Carbon Neutral Fuels/ Synthetic fuels are liquid fuels produced artificially from carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen. The fuels are considered carbon-neutral because of the amount of CO2 generated when combusting them equals that recovered in producing the fuels. Synthetic fuels made from hydrogen produced with renewable energy are known as “e-fuels”. These synthetic fuels and plant-derived fuels are both “carbon-neutral fuels”.
