KAWASAKI: Hydrogen H2?

Kawasaki’s been spinning laps on a futuristic H2. Here’s what you need to know

A quick look at electric bike sales in the UK will show you that battery-powered machinery is not getting a lot of love at the moment. But science says we need to stop putting CO2 in the air – so we need alternative power sources. Kawasaki has been looking at hydrogen combustion engines for a while; it’s already got experience in actual rocket science which often uses the lightest element as a fuel and works in other areas like shipping and heavy industry where it could be useful. In theory, hydrogen looks like a great alternative. It’s simple to adapt a petrol engine to use the flammable gas and it burns without producing carbon dioxide.

The firm showed its hydrogen-powered development bike at the Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race last month, the first public rolling demo of such a machine in the world. The bike is based on an H2SX, with enormous panniers filled with the high-pressure gas cylinders needed to hold the hydrogen. This is one of the biggest problems with the fuel: you need a lot of voluminous tanks that can stand very high pressure, while resisting the cracking effect that hydrogen has on many metals. 

Also, you need to get hydrogen in the first place; you can’t just dig it out of the ground easily, so it’s either made from fossil fuels (pointless if you’re trying to avoid carbon emissions), or by using solar, wind, or nuclear energy to electrolyse water. The problem there is the losses: up to 80 per cent of the energy is wasted making the hydrogen, compressing it, piping it out to a distribution network, then burning it in a combustion engine. Sending the green power out through existing electric wires and charging a battery in a car or bike only wastes around 20 per cent of the energy.

Hydrogen looks like a bit of a dead-end then (despite the Kawasaki looking pretty sharp around the Suzuki circuit). Mainstream cars won’t be using it, and if they aren’t paying for a distribution network, we won’t have one to use for our bikes.