Molly Taylor on Dynamics, Strategy and Safety in Hydrogen Racing
Where New Technology Meets Old Principles
Motorsport has always occupied an unusual position within engineering. It is, on one hand, entertainment; on the other, it provides an environment where ideas are subjected to extraordinary demands. Components are expected to survive impacts they were never intended to experience, systems operate at their thermal and mechanical limits, and engineers receive immediate feedback on whether a design philosophy works outside the controlled environment of a laboratory. While not every technology developed in motorsport finds its way into a production vehicle, the sport has long served as a place where emerging ideas are tested, refined and, perhaps most importantly, trusted.
Hydrogen now finds itself at a similar point in that journey.
Much of the public discussion surrounding hydrogen-powered vehicles centres on questions of viability. Is it safe? Is it practical? Can it survive the abuse expected of a modern vehicle? These questions are not answered through theoretical modelling alone. They require engineers to build systems capable of enduring the unpredictable realities of operation, and few environments expose engineering decisions more ruthlessly than competitive motorsport.
Few people are better positioned to discuss that process than Molly Taylor.
As Australia’s first female Australian Rally Champion, the youngest winner of the Australian Rally Championship at the time, a two-time Dakar finisher, 2021 Extreme E Champion and the winner of the inaugural FIA Extreme H World Cup, Taylor has spent much of her career adapting to vehicles at the forefront of technological change. Rather than simply driving them quickly, she has worked alongside engineers to understand how those machines behave, how they evolve and how seemingly small engineering decisions shape the experience behind the wheel.
Speaking with Taylor, one theme emerged repeatedly. The arrival of hydrogen has certainly changed the race car, but not necessarily in the ways most people imagine.
“I think people expect it to feel like a completely different car,” she explains. “But the motors themselves are actually quite similar. The biggest differences come from everything that’s been engineered around the hydrogen system.”
That observation immediately reframes the discussion. The headline technology may be the hydrogen fuel cell, but the engineering story extends well beyond the power source itself.
Replacing a battery-electric system with hydrogen does not simply involve swapping one energy source for another. The fuel storage system introduces new structural requirements. Additional protection is required around the tanks. Reinforcement influences packaging. Packaging affects vehicle mass. Increased mass changes braking behaviour, weight transfer and suspension loading. Those changes then influence steering feel, tyre behaviour and ultimately driver confidence.
What appears to be a single technological decision quickly becomes an exercise in systems engineering.
It is perhaps one of the least appreciated aspects of engineering outside the profession. Public conversations often isolate technology into individual components—a better battery, a more efficient motor, a stronger material—as though improvements occur independently. Engineers rarely have that luxury. Every modification creates consequences elsewhere in the system, forcing a continual process of balancing competing priorities.
Taylor sees that process from the driver’s seat.
“The car is definitely heavier,” she says. “You notice that under braking straight away.”
Stopping additional mass is only the beginning of the story. In off-road competition, where braking zones are constantly changing and grip evolves with every passing vehicle, that extra weight influences almost every dynamic characteristic of the car. More momentum must be managed before corner entry. Suspension components experience different loading. Weight transfer becomes more pronounced. Drivers adapt their timing accordingly.
Yet, despite those compromises, Taylor speaks positively about the vehicle’s handling.
“The suspension package is much better. The car feels really capable.”
That statement might appear contradictory until viewed through an engineering lens.
The additional mass introduced by the hydrogen system has not simply been accepted as a disadvantage. Engineers have responded by redesigning the surrounding vehicle. Chassis dimensions, suspension geometry and tuning capability have all evolved to produce a platform that, while heavier, offers drivers greater confidence and flexibility through corners. The engineering objective was never to eliminate compromise entirely. It was to ensure the overall package remained capable despite the new constraints imposed by the technology.
Motorsport repeatedly demonstrates that engineering is rarely the pursuit of perfection. It is the pursuit of balance.
The conversation naturally turns from the vehicle itself to the experience of driving it, and here Taylor offers another perspective that challenges common assumptions. For generations of racing drivers, combustion engines have provided a continuous stream of information. Gear changes, engine speed and exhaust note become reference points almost without conscious thought, allowing drivers to judge grip, acceleration and wheel speed through sound as much as through feel.
Electric drivetrains change that relationship.
“You stop listening to the engine,” Taylor says. “You start paying much more attention to what the chassis is doing.”
Rather than removing information, the quieter drivetrain shifts attention elsewhere. Steering loads become more noticeable. Small changes in vehicle attitude communicate more clearly through the seat. Braking zones become richer sources of feedback. Drivers develop an entirely different vocabulary for understanding the behaviour of the vehicle beneath them.
That adaptation becomes particularly important in off-road competition, where consistency is almost non-existent.
Unlike a sealed racing circuit, every stage evolves continuously. Dust settles differently, softer surfaces develop ruts, heavier vehicles alter the racing line and grip levels can change dramatically within a single corner. Learning the circuit is only part of the challenge. Drivers must also learn how the circuit is changing beneath them.
Taylor describes this process less as relearning racecraft than recalibrating perception.
Once those new reference points become familiar, they simply replace the old ones. The absence of engine noise no longer feels unusual because the driver has begun listening elsewhere.
The same theme of preparation over reaction appears when discussing energy management.
Electrified racing often creates the impression that drivers spend entire events managing energy usage, carefully balancing performance against battery life. Extreme H, Taylor explains, is rather different.
Because the races themselves are comparatively short, much of the strategic work is completed before the car ever reaches the start line. Engineers consider ambient temperature, cooling requirements, charging strategy and environmental conditions before selecting the power maps that will be used throughout the event.
“The work is really done beforehand,” Taylor explains. “Once you’re in the car, you’re driving flat out.”
It is another reminder that successful engineering is frequently invisible. Spectators naturally focus on what unfolds during competition, yet many of the decisions determining performance were made hours earlier by engineers analysing data, modelling operating conditions and selecting the configuration most likely to succeed.
That relationship between preparation and performance extends well beyond motorsport. Engineers across every discipline understand that reliability rarely appears by accident. It is designed long before the system is asked to perform.
The same philosophy becomes evident when discussing one of the most valuable resources available to any engineering team: driver feedback.
Telemetry has transformed modern motorsport. Every lap generates enormous quantities of information describing steering inputs, brake pressures, throttle position, suspension travel, wheel speeds and countless other parameters. Yet despite this abundance of data, Taylor remains convinced that numbers alone cannot fully describe vehicle behaviour.
“Data tells you a lot,” she says, “but it doesn’t tell you exactly what the driver is feeling.”
That observation captures one of the enduring realities of engineering. Instruments measure behaviour. People experience it. The challenge lies in translating one into the other.
A driver might describe uncertainty during corner entry, reduced confidence over a crest or subtle changes in rear grip as fuel loads decrease. Those sensations are subjective, yet they often provide the clues engineers need to interpret objective data correctly. Telemetry may reveal suspension movement or brake pressure changes, but without understanding what the driver experienced at precisely that moment, the significance of those measurements can remain unclear.
The conversation between driver and engineer therefore becomes one of interpretation rather than instruction. Neither replaces the other. Instead, they combine different forms of evidence to understand the behaviour of an increasingly complex machine.
Technology, Trust and the Human Element
One of the more interesting aspects of emerging technology is that success is rarely determined by engineering alone. Technical capability may be essential, but history suggests it is seldom sufficient. The public does not simply adopt new technologies because they are demonstrably better; it adopts them when they become understandable, predictable and trustworthy. Engineering can solve technical problems, but confidence is earned much more gradually through repeated exposure to systems that behave consistently under increasingly demanding conditions.
Hydrogen occupies that space today. While engineers have worked with hydrogen safely for decades across industrial applications, introducing it into mainstream transport inevitably invites scrutiny. The questions most frequently asked by the public are rarely about fuel-cell efficiency or electrochemical conversion. They are simpler, and perhaps more revealing. Is it safe? Will it last? What happens if something goes wrong?
Taylor understands those questions, but her experience suggests the engineering community has approached them in the only way it ever could: by designing safety into the vehicle before pursuing outright performance.
“The safety side has been the number one priority,” she explains. “There’s a huge amount of protection around the hydrogen system and multiple layers of redundancy built into the car. You feel very safe driving it.”
It is a comment that reveals something fundamental about engineering philosophy. Public discussion often treats safety as an additional feature, something incorporated after performance targets have been achieved. Engineers tend to reverse that sequence. Before a vehicle becomes quicker, lighter or more efficient, it must first become predictable. Before innovation earns admiration, it must first earn confidence.
The additional structural protection surrounding the hydrogen storage system illustrates that thinking particularly well. Reinforced containment, impact structures and energy absorption inevitably contribute to the overall mass of the vehicle, and Taylor readily acknowledges that the additional weight changes the way the car behaves under braking. Yet those same structures exist because the engineering objective was never to produce the lightest possible race car. It was to produce one capable of demonstrating hydrogen technology under conditions that leave little room for uncertainty.
That willingness to accept compromise in pursuit of a larger objective runs throughout the entire vehicle.
Taylor notes that regenerative braking, a feature now synonymous with many electrified racing categories, has intentionally been omitted from the current Extreme H platform. While regenerative systems can recover energy that would otherwise be lost under braking, they also introduce another layer of complexity to the driver’s relationship with the car. Braking feel changes, weight transfer changes and, on loose off-road surfaces where available grip can alter corner by corner, consistency often becomes more valuable than theoretical efficiency.
“It actually makes the driving a bit simpler,” Taylor says. “There are already so many variables with the terrain that taking one away isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
There is a temptation to view the omission as a technological limitation. It may be more accurate to see it as an engineering decision about priorities. Good engineering is rarely characterised by how many features a system possesses. More often, it is defined by restraint; by understanding which problems genuinely need solving today and which are better addressed once the underlying platform has matured.
That philosophy extends naturally into software.
Modern race cars contain computational capability unimaginable only a generation ago. Torque delivery, traction characteristics and power mapping can all be adjusted through increasingly sophisticated control strategies, allowing engineers to shape vehicle behaviour with remarkable precision. The consequence is a much larger tuning window than traditional mechanical systems could ever provide, but also a more subtle question about where control should ultimately reside.
Every racing driver values authority over the machine beneath them. Every engineer values repeatability, consistency and the ability to isolate variables. Taylor sees no conflict between those perspectives provided each discipline understands the strengths of the other.
“The software gives you more opportunities to influence how the car behaves,” she explains. “But you still need the driver to understand what’s happening.”
That distinction becomes increasingly important as vehicle technology evolves. Software can execute strategies with extraordinary precision, yet it cannot interpret uncertainty in the way an experienced driver can. Equally, intuition alone cannot reveal the countless relationships hidden within telemetry. One informs the other, creating a conversation between human experience and objective measurement that remains central to modern motorsport.
It is perhaps why Taylor repeatedly returns to communication rather than technology itself.
The driver’s responsibility is not to become the foremost authority on hydrogen systems or vehicle software. Instead, it is to understand enough about the engineering beneath them to communicate observations with clarity and context. Engineers, in turn, translate those observations into measurable changes, identifying relationships that neither telemetry nor human perception could fully explain in isolation.
“The more you understand,” Taylor says, “the better feedback you can give.”
It is a deceptively simple observation, but one that reflects engineering practice far beyond motorsport. Progress rarely occurs because a single individual possesses every answer. It occurs because specialists develop a shared language that allows different forms of expertise to converge on the same problem. Drivers contribute experience. Engineers contribute analysis. Software developers contribute control strategies. Designers contribute structural solutions. Individually those perspectives are incomplete; together they become something considerably more powerful.
Asked what skills the future of the category demands, Taylor resists nominating any particular technical discipline. Instead, she speaks about curiosity, adaptability and the willingness to learn alongside people from different backgrounds. That answer feels entirely consistent with the championship itself. Extreme H is still developing its identity, and every event provides new information about how hydrogen systems behave, how vehicles respond to changing environments and where future improvements might be found.
Motorsport has always accelerated learning in this way. It compresses years of development into months because every race becomes another opportunity to validate assumptions against reality. Designs that survive become stronger. Designs that fail become lessons. In that sense, competition has always functioned as one of engineering’s most demanding classrooms.
Whether hydrogen ultimately establishes itself as a significant transport fuel remains a question extending far beyond motorsport. Infrastructure, economics, legislation and consumer demand will all influence that outcome. Those decisions belong to governments, manufacturers and society itself.
What motorsport can contribute is something different.
It can expose new technology to extraordinary mechanical stress while placing every engineering decision under public scrutiny. It can demonstrate that safety is not a marketing claim but a design philosophy, and that confidence is earned not through promises but through repeated evidence. Every successful event, every completed stage and every vehicle that returns to the paddock contributes another small piece to that growing body of evidence.
Listening to Molly Taylor, it becomes clear that the most compelling story surrounding Extreme H is not hydrogen alone. It is the engineering culture that surrounds it; one that accepts compromise without surrendering ambition, embraces complexity without pursuing it unnecessarily and understands that innovation is measured not by novelty, but by reliability.
That perspective perhaps explains why Taylor remains optimistic about the category. She is not simply competing in another championship. She is participating in a period of engineering discovery, where drivers and engineers are collectively answering questions that cannot be resolved in simulation or discussed into existence. They must instead be tested, refined and demonstrated in the environment motorsport has always provided.
The race itself lasts only a matter of minutes. The engineering lessons, however, have a habit of travelling much further.
Blossom Fernandez is an automotive engineer specialising in electric vehicle systems and standards. She contributes to EV standards committees and supports emerging engineers through mentoring and STEM engagement. Blossom is a relentless learner committed to growth, challenge, and constant evolution.