Ferrari’s Unique Hydrogen ICE Design With Room for Tanks

The luxury sports automaker has filed a patent filled with wildly new H2 concepts and ideas

Ferrari has patented a new patent for a kind of hybrid hydrogen car with characteristics well away from any vehicle it has ever produced – and quite different from any other previously made sportscar, for that matter (with the exception of a few planes flown during World War II).

Hydrogen ICE – Internal Combustion Engine Technology with WOW Factor

While it’s not at all uncommon for wild new tech concepts to be patented by automakers in order to provide their ideas with protection, this particular filing stands out.

To start, Ferrari’s description involved a number of different traits for a hydrogen car that, bringing them together as a system.  Moreover, the filing was titled “CAR PROVIDED WITH A HYDROGEN-POWERED INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE”. It contained a number of other documents describing several atypical systems for a potential reduced carbon emission sportscar.

All the hydrogen car ideas came from a single inventor

Fabrizio Favaretto – a Ferrari employee for nearly a quarter of a century and the company’s current Vehicle and Powertrain Architectures Innovation Manager – was credited with inventing all the ideas described in the patent filing.

The filing provided a description of a hybrid hydrogen car not entirely like the Corvette E-Ray in its overall configuration.  It had an electric motor in the front and its engine in the back.  That said, the similarities ceased there, and the Ferrari design went in a fresh direction.

There was no real detail provided to the front axle’s electric traction system. Instead, the focus was placed on the transaxle and rear-mounted engine.

Fueled by H2 gas

The H2 combustion engine is an inline six cylinder that makes room for the hydrogen car’s tanks on either side of it. What’s truly eye capturing about the descriptions is that the entire engine has been mounted upside down within the vehicle.  That is, the crankshaft is at the engine’s highest point, and right above the road is the cylinder head.

Closing thoughts

Though it might sound as if the Ferrari filing’s description seems pointlessly different just to be different, there is a logic behind it. By placing the engine upside down in this way, it becomes possible to achieve a higher transaxle placement, meaning that at the back of the car, they can install a more aggressive diffuser.