The future of eco-friendly rides is here! MIT’s Electric Vehicle Team just unveiled plans for a hydrogen-powered motorcycle designed for research. This bad boy runs on a fuel cell system and debuted its first test drive in October.
Unlike the races and comps their other vehicles enter, this hydrogen bike is built to showcase new tech at conferences. The team wants it to kickstart discussions about smaller hydrogen systems that could expand infrastructure if more people use them.
They started with a frame from a 1999 motorcycle and customized everything to fit the electric motor, hydrogen tank, fuel cell and more. With limited space, it took some creative solutions to mount all the components without conflicts.
At first the bike ran on batteries until the fuel cell arrived from Doosan in South Korea. Now the team is making an in-depth guidebook showing their process to help others learn. No hydrogen motorcycle is commercially available yet, so this info could be a game-changer.
The open-source design lets researchers tinker and swap parts to test theories on a real bike. Commercial versions would be way more expensive since the fuel cell tech still costs a lot. But this research-focused build is perfect for trying new ideas on hydrogen vehicles.
The team will keep improving it over time to make the bike more robust and efficient. They said projects like this are key to advancing hydrogen’s role in energy. It shows the tech works well and helps identify ways to optimize it.
So while you won’t see this hydrogen motorcycle at dealerships anytime soon, it’s a rad prototype pushing sustainable transportation forward. Props to MIT for open-sourcing the design to drive innovation. Maybe someday your eco-friendly ride will be powered by tech tested on their hydrogen research bike!
