The Hopium Machina is a 500PS hydrogen sportscar

Very little detail exists beyond the headline figures, even though the car has been revealed on a rather sparse stand in Paris, but we do know that the company was founded by Oliver Lombard, a racing driver who won the LMP2 category at Le Mans in 2011.

Of the car, what we do know is that the Machina stores hydrogen in long, cylindrical containers that run down the floor and central tunnel of the car. These hold hydrogen at 700 bar and can be filled in just three minutes. Fuel cells then send electricity to some as yet unspecified “minimum sized” batteries which run the Machina’s electric motors.

Those motors, also a bit of a mystery, will apparently give the Machina over 500PS (386kW) and mean it can manage 143mph and hit 62mph in under five seconds.

Design-wise, it’s a saloon body with a notchback rear. The clever bit on the outside is the front end, which looks normally like just a simple aerodynamically shaped bumper, but which can open up, through a series of mini grille holes, to allow cooling for the batteries and hydrogen systems. As is de rigueur for new zero emissions vehicles it also does away with door handles and wing mirrors for minimum drag.

Inside, Hopium calls its interior, rather creepily, the “membrane”. It makes big claims of having an interface that “supplants the touchscreen”. In practice this appears to be a series of haptic controls on the centre console which connect to a large screen on the dash which can “collapse” to a smaller size if you want.

Seating is for four, with all passengers in individual bucket seats and there is a large panoramic roof running the length of the car which, much like the Lucid Air and the Porsche Taycan, can be switched between opaque and transparent.         

Other than that, we know very little about Hopium’s Machina. At the Paris Motor Show the stand was the definition of minimal, with just the car rotating and nothing else around. We’ll hopefully be able to bring you more as soon as we find someone who works for Hopium to talk to.

Photography by Ben Miles.