Reducing heating time in hot stamping process is of great significance to energy saving and emission reduction. In this work, we explored the feasibility and benefits of rapidly heating (over 100 ^oC/s) a novel coating-free oxidation resistant press hardening steel (PHS). Dilatometer and Scanning Electron Microscope experiments indicated that a total heating time of 120 s was sufficient to achieve complete austenitization at 930 ^oC for a 2.0 mm thick coating-free PHS at a heating rate of 100 ^oC/s. This corresponds to a reduction of 60% in the total heating time that is required for processing the conventional PHS 22MnB5 of the same thickness at a relatively slow heating rate of 10 ^oC/s. Uniaxial tensile testing results showed that an ultimate tensile strength of 1722 MPa and a uniform elongation of 5.1% were achieved for the coating-free PHS after rapid heating, soaking, water quenching and baking, which exhibited a significant improvement in both strength and uniform elongation over the PHS 22MnB5 (1583 MPa and 4.1%) under the same rapid heating treatment. In addition, the thickness of oxide layer on the coating-free PHS after rapid heating and soaking in ambient atmosphere (for a duration of 120 s) is less than 5 μm, which is much thinner than that of the baseline PHS 22MnB5, i.e. 36 μm. In addition, the study found that by changing the annealing process of the cold-rolled sheet, the annealed microstructure could be transformed into martensite. The efficiency of complete austenitization of the material in the hot forming process can be greatly improved, thereby shortening the total heating time required for hot forming. Therefore, the heating time required for hot forming can be shortened to less than 1 min. At the end, the benefits of adopting rapid heating schedule for the coating-free PHS are highlighted.