Full Review

12 January 2007 - If your environmentalism even extends to your toys, then the H-racer hydrogen fuelled racing car will be right up your street. But is it a great toy to own or merely a fad gadget preying on your green weaknesses? We check it out.

Claiming to be the world's smallest hydrogen-powered fuel cell car, Horizon, the car's makers have created a simple kit for you to put together so you can see how these things work and have the fun of experimenting with the technology yourself at home.

The little racer features a fetching silver and blue body, and “is as green-friendly as you can get without being a tree”, according to Horizon.

After building the car which includes everything from an on-board hydrogen storage tank, a fuel cell system connected to the car's electric motor - don't worry it takes minutes not hours, you are charged (see what we did there) with the task of providing it power.

This is done via the accompanying fuelling station, which is powered either by two AA batteries or a solar panel depending on how sunny it is and how green you fancy being.

This being the UK, it’s a good job there is the option of the two batteries, as during our loan for review we haven't as yet had a good enough day to test the solar panel properly.

Once you've filled the fuelling station with water and turned it on it takes about a minute to fill the small gas chamber (read balloon) with enough hydrogen to power the car for around 30 seconds - with blue strobe lights it looks pretty cool too.

In tests we struggled to get much more than this although the instructions do estimate that with practice and care you can get up to a whopping 3 to 4 minutes worth of juice to power your car.

Three minutes might sound like a small amount of time, but with no steering that's a long strip of lino to find.

Once you've run out of fuel/hydrogen it’s a case of refuelling again and repeating the process till the cows come home, or more likely you become bored.

VERDICT
The H-racer hydrogen fuelled racing car is the ultimate executive gadget that will set you back a crisp £50 note to prove your green credentials to the rest of the office.

While its great fun, it's more of an icon that will sit on your desk rather than get much racing action and although aimed at kids we're not sure how much entertainment or education they will get out of it for the same amount of money spent on a science kit.

Good, but only for those with money to burn like the petrol they put in there not so green car.

This product was kindly loaned to us by Boysstuff.co.uk

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