Green hydrogen powers parts of the festival

Energy: it’s always a talking point at Goodwood, but the focus is normally on how we can sustainably power vehicles. This year, it was all about how the event itself was powered. Typically, off-grid energy for events like Goodwood rely on diesel generators, but at FoS 2024, renewable energy company GeoPura partnered with Siemens to showcase commercial green hydrogen power - and used it to run sections of the festival. Hydrogen provided emission-free charging for the Honda E and the Siemens’ E-Chopper, as well as clean power in some zones including the First Glance Paddock. As far as we’re aware, this is the first time that a big Goodwood talking point has been about the powering of the event itself.

New cars galore!

Where to start? There were plenty of eye-catching cars at Goodwood, but for sheer chutzpah, Red Bull’s RB17 was hard to beat. The track-only 1200 hp monster was designed by Adrian Newey, the renowned and highly-compensated designer behind Red Bull’s F1 car. The RB17 isn’t road-legal and only 50 will be made, with lap speeds about the same as F1 cars and a top speed of 217 mph. Eeek.

Land Rover’s top-end Defender OCTA also made a splash at the festival – appropriately, since its “Wade” mode allows it to travel safely through up to a metre of water. It’s the quickest, meanest,  most amped-up Land Rover ever, with a 0-60 time of 3.8 seconds, an impressive selection of driving modes and the ability to handle almost any terrain. Its stellar off-road performance was honed by nearly 14,000 engineering tests.

Another eye-catcher for us was the BMW M5, the first hybrid iteration of the model, with variable all-wheel drive (and steering), brutal performance and apparently more tech than most of us would expect to find in one place. It also features a sound system from our friends at Bowers & Wilkins.

Electric Vehicles

We saw the largest-ever presence of EVs at this year’s festival, including Chinese brands Jaecoo, BYD and Yangwang (remember when we made a note to look out for Chinese brands in an earlier newsletter?). For the G&H team one of the standouts was Polestar’s presence, with its series 3 and 4 cars and an amazing Concept BST; a racey take on the Polestar 6 concept that looks and feels like the future of automotive.

The Future Lab...and other futures

The Future Lab (presented by Randox in 2024) is described by Goodwood as a “hub of revolutionary innovations and inspiring ideas...(which) celebrates technology for a better tomorrow”. This year the tech showcase embraced four themes: Protecting the Planet, Robots to the Rescue, Future of Flight and Our World in Pixels. The lab is a hub where you can rub shoulders with some of the world’s greatest innovators, and one of many highlights was Shadow Robot, which is collaborating with Google DeepMind on its new robotic hand. Meanwhile, the Indy Autonomous Challenge returned for its second year with the AV-24, the first fully-autonomous race car, piloted by the PoliMOVE-MSU team, while Durham University’s DUSC2023 solar car - designed and built by students - completed Goodwood’s famous Hill Climb. To do so, it faced gradients twice as steep as any it encountered in its celebrated coast-to-coast, solar-powered crossing of Australia. The team also showed off its new solar racing car, Ortus-T, which it will race in Belgium this year.

A VAN wins the shootout!

That a van won the Hill Climb – Goodwood’s famous mini-race – was a big talking point this year. But this was no ordinary van; it was Ford’s electric SuperVan 4.2, with 1,400 horsepower and Romain Dumas inside it.

FoS 2024 highlights

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What caught our attention this month

Oxford Ionics has introduced a revolutionary quantum computing chip, which could lead to the development of the world's first practical quantum computer within three years.

Meet Daisy, Helixx’s 3D-printed prototype van that could revolutionise last-mile delivery, and is inspired by the process-following modus operandi of McDonald’s.

According to researchers at Chalmers University, nearly all flights under 750 miles could be powered by hydrogen by 2045. Hydrogen-powered aviation offers substantial potential for decarbonisation, with the possibility of commercial flights in Sweden as early as 2028.