Nearly a year ago now, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG) – the boutique vehicle manufacturer founded by wealthy film producer and financier James Glickenhaus – teased a forthcoming hydrogen-fueled Boot Zero off-road truck that will tackle the grueling Baja 1000 desert race. Back then, it existed only as a CAD model.
But today… It still only exists as a CAD model, albeit a more thoroughly developed one. Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus just published an update on its hydrogen-fuel-cell Boot Zero, which now looks almost ready to rock with a big, square hydrogen tank in the bed and a nose-mounted spare tire. What basically amounts to a hydrogen-fueled version of SCG’s existing Boot off-road truck, the Boot Zero – or Hydrogen Boot, as SCG refers to it in its latest press release – is being built only for the Baja 1000, at least for now. SCG does have plans to take lessons learned from the race truck and apply them to a road-legal version for public consumption later.
SCG Boot: Why Hydrogen?
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus believes that both battery-electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell technology will make up important parts of zero-emission vehicles. Reason being: weight. Batteries are heavy. In a recent press release, Glickenhaus noted that the new pure-electric Ford F-150 Lightning weighs a full 1,000 pounds more than the regular truck. In fact, today’s batteries store less than 0.5 megajoules per kilogram, the company says, vs. 46 for gasoline and around 120 for hydrogen. The low energy density of batteries is obviously less-than-ideal in a race like the Baja 1000, but it’s also not ideal for planes, ships, or commercial vehicles.
Glickenhaus is all confidence when it comes to the SCG Boot Zero off-road truck, saying “our truck is something you can drive to the Baja 1000, race 1000 miles, and drive home. The Baja is a brutal race, the longest continuous off-road race globally. There is not a battery-electric vehicle in the world that can successfully run the Baja 1000.”
The SCG Boot Zero – or Hydrogen Boot, or whatever Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus ends up calling it – could be ready to race as soon as the 2022 running of the Baja 1000 this November. Place your bets.
Of course, if high octane is your thing, you can order yourself an SCG Boot with either an Chevy-supplied LT1 or LT4 V8 engine, if you so choose. The base price for a two-door SCG Boot starts at $258,750 USD, with customer options taking it up from there. The four-door version asks $287,500.
