I have to admit that when I was asked to review the hydrogen car I thought I had managed to scoop the easy review - a job for the boys ... so I took it home to my husband and 9 year old son to a rapturous welcome.  They dived straight in and were building the palm-sized car immediately.  The H-racer is an educational toy - bringing the science of fuel cell cars to a demonstration scale - and a cool one at that.  Blue lights flash as the hydrogen is generated out of water, use of a syringe mechanism to take the hydrogen from the hydrogen station into the car and then the achievement of watching the car zoom across the floor, powered by hydrogen. 

The car comes in component form with a set of detailed instructions for building and fuelling.  Lots of warnings about the need for supervision - and the truth is that safety aside, it is fairly complicated so we are not looking at a toy here.  But what was particularly great about the H-racer was the discussions that resulted around hydrogen fuel and new technologies. 

The car comes with two options for the generation of hydrogen - a solar panel or batteries.  According to the instructions, the panels need to be placed in direct sunlight but there hasn't been much of that recently so we had to resort to batteries.  Roll on  sunny days when we can put the solar panel to use.  Aside from this, the H-racer is a great concept to bring the hydrogen fuel cell technology alive in the sitting room.