Japan’s Big Four + Toyota’s HySE Project Is a Badass Hydrogen-Powered UTV

What do Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Honda, and Toyota have in common? Well, clearly, they’re all Japanese, and they’re among the biggest brands in their respective industries. They’re also paragons of reliability, with the Japanese Big Four’s bikes all known for being capable of surpassing six-digit odometers. And as for Toyota, well, its vehicles have proven to be pretty much indestructible.

And so when these five companies collaborated to pretty much define the future of mobility, you can bet that the world was watching and that they were gonna come up with something pretty damn huge.

Indeed, it seems that they did not disappoint, as the HySE project is gearing up to tackle the 2025 Dakar Rally head on. The collaborative project will participate in the Dakar Rally’s new Mission 1000 category which focuses on new mobility technology such as electric, hydrogen, and hybrid vehicles.

As for HySE, well, the vehicle in question is nothing short of badass, and could very well be a glimpse into the future not just of off-road racing, but of mobility as a whole. The badass off-road racer is a crossover between multiple worlds, the perfect exercise of how powers can come together to produce something so much bigger than anyone thought.

Under the hood, the HySE project is powered by a 998cc inline-four engine powered by none other than hydrogen. This engine configuration is nothing new, in fact, the team is using a Kawasaki engine—presumably one from a ZX-10R—that’s been heavily modified to be powered by hydrogen.

On paper, the specs are nothing short of impressive, with 150 horsepower on tap and 200 Nm (around 148 pound-feet) of torque. The thing will power a bonkers off-road racing machine that sort of looks like an overgrown side-by-side. It boasts long-travel suspension with tons of articulation to handle big jumps and high-speed sections, as well as knobby all-terrain tires that’ll make munching mile after mile of desert trail a walk in the park for this thing.

Should this thing prove to be even more of a success than it already is, it just might pave the way for the future of engines. Heck, this might actually be the closest thing we have to securing the future of internal combustion. Forever.

Not to put pressure on Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Toyota, but the future of internal combustion is literally in your hands.