I’m showing my age here, but have you ever heard of Betamax? It was like VHS but demonstrably better. It had better sound quality and better picture quality.
I’m assuming you know what VHS was. If you’re under the age of 30 you may have no memory of ever actually interacting with VHS tapes, but I’m willing to bet you know what they were, even if you’ve only ever seen them referenced in TV and films.
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Anyway, Betamax was effectively like that; it, too, was a technology centered around reels of magnetic tape housed within a plastic cassette. But, as I say, it was better. This is why television stations used its professional equivalent, Betacam, well into the 2000s.
Betamax never really took off in the consumer world, however. In part, that’s because VHS tapes initially allowed for longer recordings, and in part because Betamax tapes and equipment were more expensive. But mostly it was because the infrastructure to support VHS usage (eg, affordability and availability of VCRs, and video rental stores) was established more quickly.
The great lesson of Betamax is that a good idea is not guaranteed to be a successful one. That is: a good product can be beaten by an inferior product that is easier to access.
A BAD GOOD IDEA
I’ve been thinking about that lesson lately and how it applies to an idea that’s circling around the world of motorcycling at the moment: hydrogen-powered motorcycles. I’m convinced it’s an idea that will never really get off the ground. The reason for that comes down to one simple word: infrastructure.
You’re probably aware that Kawasaki has produced a fully-functioning hydrogen-powered prototype motorcycle. It’s effectively a Ninja H2 “with modifications made to allow direct injection of hydrogen fuel into the cylinders,” according to Kawasaki.
“The motorcycle’s chassis was designed to accommodate hydrogen fuel canisters and a hydrogen fuel supply system on-board,” the manufacturer explained earlier this year.
In a video released around the same time, the bike’s project leader, Satoaki Ichi, explains that “hydrogen engines produce power like conventional gasoline engines: air is taken in, mixed with fuel, and then combusted. But when hydrogen combusts, (only) water is produced.”
Kawasaki’s set-up is somewhat unique for personal vehicles. Usually when we talk about hydrogen vehicles we’re talking about vehicles that use hydrogen fuel cells (also known as HFCVs). Dramatically oversimplifying things, a hydrogen fuel cell uses hydrogen to create electricity. So, the driving/riding experience is somewhat similar to that of an electric vehicle.
With Kawasaki’s hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine, however, you get to keep the benefits of a gasoline/petrol-powered engine (eg, internal combustion engine sound, feel, and refueling ease), without generating as many of the planet-damaging side effects. You get motorcycle noise but not motorcycle emissions.
“We are still at the basic research stage,” Ichi says in the video, acknowledging that there are quite a few issues to work through before a hydrogen motorcycle could go to market.
One of those issues is range. At present, refueling a hydrogen vehicle is faster than refueling an electric vehicle ─ the process more closely resembling the experience of refueling a ‘traditional’ gasoline/petrol-powered vehicle. But that fill-up won’t get you nearly as far as you’d like.
You’ll notice Kawasaki’s prototype motorcycle has a massive tank covering the space where panniers would normally be. According to an article in MCN earlier this year, 4 kilograms of hydrogen delivers roughly the same amount of energy as 15 liters of gasoline/petrol. That latter fuel weighs roughly 12 kg, so theoretically there’s a weight savings with hydrogen, BUT “at atmospheric pressure, 4 kg of hydrogen would fill 44,000 liters of space.”
The fuel used by hydrogen vehicles is pressurized (to about 10,000 psi) but still needs more room than gasoline/petrol. And even with bigger or multiple tanks, hydrogen vehicles have less range than their gasoline/petrol equivalents. For Kawasaki, that’s an issue that is exacerbated by the fact that a hydrogen internal combustion engine isn’t as efficient as a gasoline/petrol-powered one (HFCVs are better, but still nowhere near as efficient as electric vehicles).
And on and on and on. From storage to transport to parking (manufacturers of hydrogen vehicles strongly advise against parking in enclosed spaces because the fuel may vent out and fill the space) there are a lot of problems with hydrogen vehicles that will take years to work out. But quite possibly no one will ever bother to do so because of the biggest problem: fuel availability.
Presently in the United Kingdom, there are just 15 hydrogen fueling stations. And many of those are not available to the general public, being used instead by, say, hydrogen fuel cell buses. Compare that to 35,810 public charging locations for electric vehicles (That’s four times the number of public gasoline/petrol stations, by the way ─ there are 8,353 of those).
If you’re playing along in the United States, the numbers are a teensy bit better but not by much. The country is home to 54 publicly available hydrogen fuelling stations. However, all but one of those stations is in California. The odd one out is in Hawaii. Meanwhile, according to a report this year from Pew Research Center, the USA is home to more than 61,000 publicly accessible electric vehicle charging stations. Which, according to the center, means that 64 percent of Americans live within 2 miles of a charger.
(If you are wondering, there are apparently about 115,000 gas stations in the United States.)
Keep in mind that these numbers don’t include home chargers (there are 1 million of those in the UK, according to the Guardian).
Without even choosing a side as to whether electric or hydrogen is actually ‘better’ than the other, it’s clear that the latter faces the Betamax problem. And the technology is too far behind at this point to gain popular appeal among private vehicle owners.
Not too long ago, in an article introducing myself to Bike-urious readers, I wrote “Old boys need to get over their hang-ups about electric bikes.”
That thought’s been coming back to me over and over. The more I think about it, the less I understand the vitriol that some people feel toward electric motors (Dude, electric bikes can be stupidly fun). I can’t help feeling that the only reason hydrogen gets any discussion outside of ‘Can we do it?’ engineering circles is simply that there’s a contingent that inexplicably hates electric vehicles so much they’ll cling to anything else.
I’m convinced, though, that as far as personal vehicles are concerned (commercial vehicles being a different matter), hopes of a hydrogen future are completely misguided.
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