These E-Bikes Are Hydrogen-Powered, and You Can Fuel Them Up at Home

[Caribbeans]

These E-Bikes Are Hydrogen-Powered, and You Can Fuel Them Up at Home

RideApart | Enrico Punsalang | 7/2024

Crackin' eggs while crackin' hydrogen.

Electric bicycles continue to shape the way people move around in the urban setting. And while there have been a few hurdles surrounding their adoption—i.e., fire risks and safety hazards—so it’s clear that manufacturers stand to gain if they push the bounds of what an e-bike is capable of.

Case in point: these new hydrogen-powered electric bicycles from Swiss startup HydroRide.

Sure, hydrogen-powered e-bikes aren’t exactly a brand-new concept, but HydroRide takes things a step further. It allows you to produce your own hydrogen fuel.

How, you may ask? Well, HydroRide has a compact hydrogen generator that you can use at home or in the office. It can produce 20 grams of hydrogen from 200 milliliters of purified water. This takes some time, though—around six hours, to be specific. But hey, the thing can even be powered by solar panels instead of relying on the grid to produce hydrogen.

Once the machine has produced the hydrogen, it stores it in a 9.8-inch tall bottle-like container which is then slotted into the bicycle's frame. Equipped with a 550-watt fuel cell, HydroRide’s bikes are said to offer around 60 kilometers—that’s 37 miles—of range per bottle...more
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/lifestyle/shopping/these-e-bikes-are-hydrogen-powered-and-you-can-fuel-them-up-at-home/ar-BB1qOOiY

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China's Hydrogen-Powered Bikes Sell Out 1 Million Units in Just 1 Hour, Leaving U.S & Japan Astonished

[Think. Again.]

1. Thanks for posting this....

The U.S. is so, so far behind so many other countries, and the next four years are just going to put us further behind.

We really shouldn't have allowed the fossil fuel industry to put our energy independence and security in the hands of every other country out there.

[nocoincidences]

2. This seems amazing to me!!

What are the drawbacks I am too uneducated to see?

[caraher]

4. Where to begin...

Unnecessarily complex and certainly expensive. Wasteful of energy - charging a battery is vastly more efficient use of the electricity than splitting water by electrolysis then recombining the the hydrogen with oxygen to make electricity. Hydrogen does store a lot of energy per gram, but as a gas isn't very dense, so energy per unit volume is likely low compared to a battery, and storing it at high pressure to increase the volumetric energy density can make for a heavy container. Another article (that seems to have a reasonable summary of pros and cons) shows a 600 g weight savings (2.4 kg for the cylinder vs. a 3 kg) compared to a battery with comparable energy storage, but that comparison leaves out the lower efficiency of fuel cells compared to batteries in delivering electricity from that stored energy, so overall you'll get more range per unit weight from a battery than this hydrogen tank.

It's also likely very expensive - to the point that it appears they are not selling these to individuals. Fuel cell technology isn't cheap.

[kysrsoze]

3. Seems unnecessarily complicated. My e-bike is powered by...

My solar panels. No need for hydrogen. What’s crazy is both this one and my fully analog bike run by using your legs and pedaling! And as an added bonus, you actually get exercise and strengthen your heart, lungs and muscles!

[Unladen Swallow]

5. That's gonna be a hard pass for me

if they explode like all these new fancy Chinese batteries do that are in all the e-cigs and fancy kids' scooters and what-not. Seems like Chinese QA is... lacking, generally speaking.

[4catsmom]

6. so one article that hydrogen is BS

and three articles about hydrogen powered vehicles. Now i'm confused