This previous week, I attended the Micromobility Europe occasion in Amsterdam, the place I noticed many acquainted firm faces and several other new ones within the broader micromobility world. One of the crucial fascinating new startups I noticed on the present was Hydroride Europe AG, which confirmed off a number of hydrogen-powered bicycles and a small at-home hydrogen generator for “recharging” the bike by producing small bottles of hydrogen fuel.
From a distance, the bikes don’t look a lot totally different than every other electrical bike you’ve most likely seen earlier than.
And to be trustworthy, they don’t even look that totally different from up shut, both.
You’ll nonetheless spot a hub motor powering the wheel and what appears to be like like a battery holder, both within the downtube or hidden in a rack-mounted unit. However while you flip the important thing and pop the “battery” lid, you’ll rapidly understand it’s hiding a bit inexperienced bottle as a substitute of a blue shrink-wrapped battery.
These little hydrogen tanks, across the measurement of a 500 mL water bottle, maintain sufficient hydrogen for round 60 km or 36 miles of using. They feed hydrogen into an on-board hydrogen gas cell, which makes use of a chemical course of to transform the hydrogen into electrical energy, with the one output being water.
That’s proper, if the underside of your bike wasn’t so filthy, you would most likely put your lips as much as it and drink.
My first experience on a hydrogen bike
After trying out the exhibit, I took one of many hydrogen bikes out for a check experience within the Amsterdam streets across the commerce present.
I’m unsure what I used to be anticipating, however it felt just about like…. every other European e-bike I’ve tried. The facility was positive, modest however positive. The experience was snug. And it felt like a reasonably typical electrical bike.
To be trustworthy, I suppose that’s the purpose. Hydrogen isn’t meant to be some revolutionary recreation changer for efficiency. On the finish of the day, the motor remains to be a primary 250W e-bike hub motor. And thus, the experience seems like a primary 250W e-bike.
The primary distinction is the place the power is coming from. On this case, from a bit white field that appears like a laser printer, but is seemingly an at-home hydrogen generator.
If something, essentially the most shocking factor concerning the experience itself was simply how unsurprising it was. I didn’t actually have to vary something about my using because it’s nonetheless an electrical bike, simply not a battery electrical bike.
E-bikes are already prolific. Why hydrogen?
It’s true, battery-powered electrical bikes are all over the place. If there was ever going to be a hydrogen vs battery e-bike struggle, you’d suppose it will be over earlier than it even started.
So why are we even nonetheless speaking about hydrogen bikes? Nicely, there are nonetheless just a few benefits over conventional e-bikes. Nearly all electrical bicycles lately use lithium-ion batteries, which often require problematic or in any other case uncommon supplies to supply. As a lot as battery makers have tried to restrict the quantity of such minerals, we’re typically nonetheless beholden to suppliers from a handful of nations utilizing generally unethical means to obtain the mandatory supplies to supply these batteries.
Hydrogen, however, may be produced in your lounge or kitchen utilizing a small hydrogen generator. Heck, you may even purchase one on Amazon if you’d like. It nonetheless requires electrical energy to energy the electrolysis course of, that means you’re going to lose some power alongside the way in which attributable to inefficiencies within the course of. However similar to how a wall charger doesn’t put 100% of the electrical energy that flows by it into your battery, there are all the time inefficiencies in power transfers. And equally to a wall charger for a battery e-bike, Hydroride’s electrolysis machine may be solar-powered, that means you’re successfully utilizing free power from the solar to supply gas. It’s actually a “simply add water” course of to generate your individual gas.
As soon as on the bike, the experience is as zero emissions as a battery-powered bicycle. Or, nearly as zero emissions, so long as you don’t depend the occasional drops of pure water produced by the hydrogen gas cell on board the bike.
Who is that this for?
It’s true, the corporate presents an at-home hydrogen generator and which means you would conceivably use a hydrogen bike like this as your each day rider. However as I realized on the sales space, they’re extra targeted on B2B than B2C, with their major objective being bike and scooter sharing firms, not particular person shoppers such as you and me.
And that makes extra sense, in my view. Sure, I settle for that hydrogen has distinctive benefits that batteries don’t. However battery e-bikes have such a maintain on the business that I don’t see main modifications coming there anytime quickly.
However for sharing firms, these batteries are one of many greatest complications of their business. The only largest supply of emissions for many scooter and bike-sharing companies is the diesel-powered van that has to go round to swap batteries in this stuff. And so should you might match bigger hydrogen bottles on these bikes to offer them extra vary (the small bottles already give scooters 100 km or 60 miles of vary), or you would use native hydrogen mills for on-site bottle swaps, that might make a big effect.
It additionally removes the difficulty of charging tons of of batteries at a storage depot and the ensuing hearth considerations associated to these tons of of batteries.
To be honest, a fast verify of the periodic desk jogs my memory that hydrogen isn’t precisely essentially the most inert of the gases, both. However we’ve come a great distance from the times of the Hindenburg and are fairly good about safely controlling the storage and switch of hydrogen, particularly in small water bottle-sized packages.
What’s my verdict?
To be trustworthy, I used to suppose hydrogen was lifeless on arrival for e-bikes. And I nonetheless am not very bullish on it gaining a lot market share. However now I not less than see that it has actual potential for sure particular niches.
Sharing and different fleet utilization appears to be the perfect use case, since I don’t see it taking off for common shoppers. I positively see the benefits of hydrogen for a pizza store with a fleet of supply e-bikes that doesn’t need to take care of a tabletop filled with charging batteries, or for a scooter sharing operation that doesn’t need the logistical nightmare of tons of or hundreds of unstable batteries of their warehouse.
However let’s simply say I don’t suppose I’ll be using a hydrogen-powered Trek or Gazelle bike quickly.
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