Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, the maverick racing team that has taken on major carmakers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, is surprisingly turning its attention to the pickup segment. It aims to build a hydrogen-powered work truck that’s as cheap to buy and operate as a turbodiesel-powered model.
To say that the announcement comes as a surprise is an understatement; it’s as if Lamborghini suddenly decided to build an alternative to the Ford F-Series Super Duty. The street-legal variants of SCG’s race cars are hugely expensive, low-volume supercars aimed at serious collectors. Yet, SCG explains that it’s developing its upcoming pickup for “fleets, game wardens, and farmers,” among other buyers. It’s an unlikely overlap.
Back to the road: on paper, the yet-unnamed model has already started taking shape. It will be offered with two or four doors and either a six- or an eight-foot cargo box, according to a post on SCG’s Facebook page. Every variant regardless of body style will feature swappable hydrogen tanks, presumably to ensure the truck can keep on truckin’ even if it ventures a hundred miles away from the nearest refueling station.
Beyond that, details are murky. “Hydrogen-powered” can mean very different things in different contexts. Is a fuel cell using hydrogen to make electricity, like in the BMW iX5, or is an internal combustion engine burning the hydrogen, like in Toyota’s experimental Corolla race car? Either way, SCG promises towing, payload, and performance numbers similar to a diesel truck’s, as well as up to 800 miles of driving range. It’s also planning on offering “a small unit that can fill our swappable tanks using solar and water to make [hydrogen].” Color us intrigued, to say the least.
Ambitious? Hell yes. Can SCG pull it off? Who knows? The brand has achieved some pretty admirable feats in the past couple of years, but the rift between building a handful of supercars and a mass-market pickup makes the Grand Canyon look like a rain gutter. At least SCG isn’t starting from scratch: it made a hydrogen-powered variant of the Boot it developed for the Baja 1000 in 2022, though the street-legal model we were promised hasn’t arrived yet. Some of the technology packed in the prototype, such as the swappable tanks, has been transferred to the truck.
As for the design, well … let’s call it a work in progress. SCG released a preview image that blends a Jeep Wrangler-like front end, a Ford F-150-esque cab, a black chest for the hydrogen hardware, and a relatively short cargo box. It’s not too far-fetched to assume the production model will not look like that. We might not have to wait long to find out, as the company wrote on Facebook that it hopes to build its first trial truck “soon.”
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