Kristoffersson Positive About Extreme H Future After World Cup Debut
London, United Kingdom, 30 October, 2025: As a two-time Extreme E champion, the race win record holder in the category, and a champion and race winner in countless other series, Johan Kristoffersson is a man you want to listen to.
Following the inaugural FIA Extreme H World Cup, the Swede delivered his seal of approval, and offered his hopes for continued growth for the burgeoning event.
“I believe that Extreme H has a future to continue evolving and developing towards, maybe one day being a World Championship,” he said. “So it’s interesting and I'm curious to see what's going to happen next.
“I have strong belief that the people around Extreme H have every opportunity to do it, so I'm sure that if that's their target, they will be able to give it a good go to develop towards it. But at the moment, it is a World Cup, and it's a step in the right direction.”
As the world's first hydrogen-powered motorsport event, there were a lot of ‘firsts’ to take in at the event in Qiddiya city. But for an experienced campaigner like Kirstoffersson, who’s won in combustion cars – both in the traditional sense and in sustainably-fuelled cars – and electric, while the method of power was new, the task wasn’t.
“Between hydrogen, electric, combustion or renewable or whatever it is, in the end, when I sit in the car, my job is to take the car from point A to B in the fastest possible way. And if I do that better than all the others, I pick up the biggest trophy,” Kristoffersson said. “So for me, it doesn't really matter if it's a diesel or jet engine, or if it's electric or whatever it is. In the end, it's the competition – that's why I'm there.
“But the way you work with the different technologies is quite interesting, and I believe that Extreme H will also evolve to be more and more open to the teams, potentially OEMs, to develop things around the car themselves, which is always very interesting.
“The H car started off from a lot of knowledge already from the E car, so we started from a much, much better place than what we did with E.”
With Extreme H’s Pioneer 25 being something of an evolution from Extreme E’s Odyssey 21, it wasn’t a totally new world for competitors to adapt to. But after four seasons with Rosberg X Racing, Kristoffersson was competing with his own KMS team which had to adjust to both Extreme E for the ‘Final Lap’ weekend, as well as the all-new Extreme H competition.
“We got a lot of information – RXR was very helpful in the transition from taking over the Extreme E car,” Kristoffersson said. “The car was actually the car that me and Michaela drove for Rosberg, so we got a lot of good information from them which definitely helped us to start.
“A lot of things were brand new to us, which was also a learning curve, we needed to learn things. We needed to also learn the Extreme H car. So there were a lot of new things, not only for the team, but also with the car, so it took some time before we understood everything.
“Other than that, for me it was more like a normal race weekend. I knew all the people from the beginning. Ole Christian [Veiby] knew, more or less, all the people as well, Mikaela [Ahlin-Kottulinsky] also knew all the people from KMS, so in terms of that there it was working smoothly.”
The overall level of the field has also improved since Extreme E’s debut in 2021, but Kirstoffersson feels that the sharp end of the field has always been close.
“I think it's always been very high, to be honest,” he said. “The top has always been tight, but I think maybe there are more teams that are challenging for podiums now than maybe there was before. So overall, maybe the level is a bit higher, but the top has always been really high, and I wouldn't say that the top is lower than it was either.”
Nevertheless, Kristoffersson headed to Saudi Arabia with a target on his back. Often the man everyone looks to beat, there were high expectations of him and his team. He and team-mate Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky duly delivered on that expectation with a win in the first race of the Extreme E weekend and top spot in the Extreme H Time Trial before an off in the final derailed their hopes of a podium.
“I try to do my homework before every race,” Kristoffersson said. “So in terms of that, I was definitely relaxed going there.
“Extreme E was good, but, but the H didn't turn out to be perfect. But at the same time, I think we, in hindsight, couldn't really do anything differently. We did our best. We prepared as well as we could.
“We didn't win, and that was our target, but Molly and Kevin did a very good job all weekend, and in the end, they were definitely worth the winners. That's how it is sometimes.”