foldable, sport and rental hydrogen bikes with water tanks can be refueled in 3 to 10 seconds

HydroRide Europe introduces its hydrogen bikes with fuel cell

Young Swiss company HydroRide Europe announced the entrance of their hydrogen fuel-cell bikes HYRYD, which can be refueled in 3 to 10 seconds with the built-in water tanks. The range comes in three models: foldable, sport, and rental or sharing bikes. For the company, their hydrogen rides are believed to outperform e-bikes in refueling speed and are dubbed safe and secure with low-carbon and environmental protection.

Alongside the series of bikes, HydroRide Europe is expected to launch a hydrogen generator that the riders can use at home. With 200mL of water, the machine may be able to generate 20 grams of ‘green hydrogen’. This byproduct is injected into the removable water tank, which has a design resembling a water bottle. It can only take 3 to 10 seconds to fill up the tank, and the single refuel can give riders a range of 50 to 60 kilometers. The company also plans to distribute solar-powered charging stations, so riders can swap their empty tanks in less than 10 seconds.

HYRYD Sport Bike 1.0 | all images courtesy of HydroRide Europe AG

foldable, sport and rental hydrogen bikes with water tanks

HydroRide Europe’s (see more here) foldable, sport and rental hydrogen bikes are equipped with a 180-watt fuel cell, which helps the bicycles to produce electric current that propel them. They also come with two riding modes, presumably manual pedaling and hydrogen-assist riding. These hydrogen fuel-cell bikes can have a maximum speed of 23 kilometers per hour which may make them ideal for everyday commute and occasional adventures. For the foldable model, the bike can collapse in three steps, making it portable enough to be brought anywhere even if it weighs around 19.5 kilos.

The sport variant, which has a total weight of 23.5 kilos, is suitable for adventurous riders with its ‘environmentally friendly propulsion system and an aerodynamic design for optimal performance,’ yet HydroRide Europe has yet to unveil its full specs. The rental or sharing bike, which may be the focus of the company as it targets the B2B sphere, have the same specs as their siblings, but with the addition of a front basket for goods and object storage. A single water tank, which is believed to be able to absorb more than 500 times its own volume, is hidden in each of these models’ cases, just below the rider’s seat, and the full specs of all the models are yet to be revealed.

HYRYD Foldable Bike

Hydrogen-powered vehicles or electric batteries?

The use of hydrogen in vehicles, such as BMW’s iX5 Hydrogen car, may be surfacing these days more than before as the automotive industry attempts to go green or employ green energy. They may be seen as rivals of electric vehicles, and fairly so, given that both have their own pros and cons. A 2021 MIT study suggests that the electric vehicles dominating the green energy game might be due to the cost of producing (green) hydrogen.

On the upside, it takes shorter time to pump hydrogen fuel than to charge an EV battery and can also lead to delivering longer riding and driving ranges. But this can also lead to requiring more hydrogen to be produced, which can be more expensive than what the EV market can offer, as the research suggests.

HYRYD Sport Bike 2.0

These days, most hydrogen is made from natural gas, which can generate pollution (CO2) like exhaust fumes from a car. While there’s a technology that can capture some of that pollution to make hydrogen from natural gas, it is dubbed expensive, hence the use of clean electricity to split water into hydrogen. The latter uses sources like solar or wind power to generate green hydrogen.

In this case, it would require more (clean) electricity for the vehicle on top of the electricity for its refueling station. As the study states, green hydrogen may require new clean electricity to produce hydrogen. With the price of batteries dropping, engineers may be head-on finding ways to make hydrogen less expensive as a green fuel, a factor some users may weigh in if they should go for hydrogen-fueled vehicles.

HYRYD Rental Mobility