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MIT builds an open-source hydrogen electric motorcycle that runs on fuel cell
(www.designboom.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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For longer range motorcycling, this is probably the way rather than trying to haul around a sufficiently capacious battery bank.
What remains to be seen is if anyone manages to produce a non-stupid way of producing enough hydrogen, and packaging and distributing the result in such a way that anyone in a position to take advantage of it can actually buy it. (The current methodology for bulk hydrogen production is still fossil fuel based, as far as I know.)
They don’t mention the range. It seems like it would be hard to beat current battery energy density on a motorcycle with hydrogen.
You don't really have to beat battery energy density to be better for longer range riding, you just have to have a minimum acceptable range and the ability to quickly refuel. For example having to stop every 100km for five minutes is likely going to be more acceptable to the majority than stopping every 200km for an hour.
Of course the real trick is to both figure out how far the minimum distance is for most people and - most importantly - making refuelling widely enough available that people can work on the assumption of just pulling in and filling up.
If we have to refuel more often, or if we have to recharge longer, we're still gonna need better rest areas on freeways in both scenarios.
It would also allow to do a small afternoon tour, e.g. jumping on the bike and going 200-300 km through nature just to chill, and then back home. Right now this means a 1 min break at a petrol station, as commonly after 200-250 km you have to refill.
With battery bikes and data sheet ranges of 'up to' 180 km, with 70 kg passenger at constant 45 km/h, you probably get to 20% charge after 80 km already to recharge to 80% within an hour. So after an hour waiting you just get enough to barely make it back home.
As you say, with hydrogen it would allow for shorter breaks, enabling to do a small afternoon tour at all. And I'm not that stingy about a 1min or 5min break to refill.
I mean, producing hydrogen by using electrolysis is probably the best option we have if we want to truly free ourselves from fossil fuels. You'll run into the same issue that hydrogen cars have tho, which is that it's expensive to run something on hydrogen compared to batteries. Even electric trucks are preferred to hydrogen trucks now due to the difference in costs, meaning that it's unlikely that infrastructure will be rolled out that makes a hydrogen bike usable.
In the end, these kinds of bikes might be better off with a battery swapping system like seen in electric scooters.
Certain infrastructure is planned in Germany, but bikes are of course not the target.
With the planned coal phase-out 2030-2038 (early optimistic scheduled date & later pessimistic date), the government is planning gas backup plants for 25 GW capacity. All those plants are planned for natural gas now and later to be switched to hydrogen. So the natural gas pipeline network is also included with upgrades in the future, to carry hydrogen.
For years already, in the northern parts there is sometimes too much renewable energy generated, so that wind and solar generation has to be disconnected from the grid. It's just wasted for nothing. Ideally, some those excess capacities will be used in the future to generate hydrogen. Which then can be pumped into the grid, which again can be used for gas backup plants to generate electricity.
So trucks and bikes do have a chance there, even thought the infrastructure is currently schemed on a larger scale than vehicles.
I'm way out of my area of expertise here, but couldn't we produce it in areas with easy access to renewables, like solar farms in the desert, or wind farms on the prairie, then ship it via pipelines like oil or natural gas?
Hydrogen molecules are very small and tend to diffuse through barriers, so existing pipelines need to be retrofitted.