Flip van der Merwe’s Tour de France will end this Thursday on the roads leading to Bourg-en-Bresse at the end of the 18th stage. Since the passage of the Grande Boucle at the puy de Dôme, the former emblematic player of Clermont (2015-2019) has accompanied the publicity caravan. Not on a bike, even if he defines himself more as “a mountain bike sprinter”, but in a so-called “clean” car running on hydrogen.
It’s not always easy to slip the ninety-eight meter from the second line into one of the four blue vehicles supported by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region intended to promote the soft mobility of tomorrow and hydrogen, a solution for the future for our travels. “The decarbonization of the Tour de France caravan has been a real challenge in recent years and we wanted to show the public that there are ways to develop this type of mobility”, confides the player with 35 selections between 2010 and 2015 with South Africa, who has followed the Tour de France since his youth. “In South Africa, we followed the race because there was a South African team that had participated, MTN-Qhubeka”, he confides, admitting to loving the time trial events: “There is no strategy, it’s the man against the machine and you let go of everything you have.”
At 38, former Cambridge student Flip van der Merwe became the director of Moviatech, a subsidiary of Lojelis, a start-up that offers innovative digital technological solutions to facilitate the use of hydrogen vehicles. “I did the tests and set up the route to make sure that we could refuel on the stages”, slips the native of Potchefstroom who did not go unnoticed in the car in the stages of the Massif Central. “We inevitably pass a little quickly on the road but some people have had time to recognize me”, adds the young retiree from the oval who made Jonas Vingegaard his favorite.
The carbon emissions of the 4 hydrogen vehicles used in the caravan save 1.6 tons of CO2 compared to the use of internal combustion vehicles (production of the vehicle included), i.e. a reduction of 75% over the more than 3,000 km travelled. And, importantly, 92% of the hydrogen used is carbon-free or green. Enough to give some ideas to ASO, the organizer of the Tour de France who has already done a lot for the decarbonization of the caravan. All of the organisation’s vehicles are either 100% electric or hybrid and for the first time this year, the trucks run on biofuel.
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