TECH – NAMX HUV
An all-new crossover SUV from an all-new company is aiming to make clean, green hydrogen power a mainstream thing.
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hile EV technology is advancing at a rapid pace and being widely embraced by new car buyers, the same can’t be said for hydrogen fuel cell technology. One company is aiming to change that, though, unveiling a new crossover SUV that’s been created in collaboration with legendary Italian coachbuilders, Pininfarina. While transatlantic, Japanese-American and Euro-Japanese collaborations have been common in the auto industry, an AfroEuropean connection is something new. But that’s the basis for NamX, an industrial and technological venture, whose co-
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founders, Faouzi Annajah and Thomas de Lussac, aim to “reconcile human mobility and environmental preservation on a large scale thanks to green hydrogen”. Their first product on the way to achieving that vision is the ‘HUV’.
FLEXIBLE FUTURE Unlike other hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the NamX HUV uses removable hydrogen capsules to supplement a conventional, fixed hydrogen tank that converts the compressed gas into electrical energy. The easy swap-and-change nature of the six removable hydrogen cartridges is part of a new system that NamX have patented. As applied to the HUV, the result is a claimed range of up to 800 kilometres, which in local terms, would almost get you from Melbourne to Sydney without refuelling. NamX describe their removable capsules as a breakthrough innovation “that will open the door to large-scale deployment of hydrogen for private vehicles”. To make adoption of this system easier, NamX plan to offer a home delivery
service for their capsules, thus reducing reliance on dedicated hydrogen refuelling stations, which are still relatively rare, even in Europe (only three are currently operational in Australia). While NamX are developing some of the HUV’s technology themselves, Annajah and de Lussac see themselves more as project leaders, calling on experts in their respective fields and other key players to create solutions to the problems holding back broader adoption of hydrogen as a green power source for vehicles.
THE X FACTOR Reflective of their collaborative approach in other elements of the HUV’s creation, NamX called on Pininfarina to develop the styling. While de Lussac is a designer and created some of what you see presented here, a team of Pininfarina designers, led by Chief Creative Officer Kevin Rice, brought decades of know-how in the field of automotive styling to fine-tune the design. Amongst the details developed by
