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UK's Loughborough Uni Demos Hydrogen Motorcycle

Posted by timothy on from the drinking-tube-straight-from-exhaust dept.

rolandw writes "The Beeb have a piece about Loughborough University's hydrogen motorcycle and one of the UK's first hydrogen fuel pumps (presumably all developed by their excellent Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering department). Offering 50mph, the ENV will have a range of 100 miles on a 3-minute refill of hydrogen. By-products are warm air and 'drinkable' water. It will be interesting to compare these hydrogen powered vehicles with the hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles as pioneered by such as the Morgan prototype 'Lifecar' in the near future."

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. LUFBRA by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Informative

    LUFBRA for the win!

    No, it is't pronounced "Loogabarooga".

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:LUFBRA by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 4, Funny

      LUFBRA for the win!
      No, it is't pronounced "Loogabarooga".

      No no no, it's spelled, "Raymond Luxury Yacht," but it's pronounced, "Throatwobbler Mangrove".

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  2. Re:Hydrogen Generation by mini_razor · · Score: 3, Informative

    The artcle states it uses renewable energy to create the electricity to power the electrolysis of the water. Therefore there are no byproducts at that end and oxygen is the only byproduct in the electrolysis, but as this can also be sold I wouldn't say its a by product. As for the combustion of Hydrogen in the engine, it is combusted in oxygen which forms everyones favourite molecule H2O. It is pretty much the cleanest form of power generation there is.

  3. A fuel-efficient motorcycle? No kidding! by jfengel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Vehicle not carrying extra protective carapace gets great fuel economy. Film at 11.

    If we all drove motorcycles, we would be able to power them off gasoline, because they regularly get two to three times as many miles per gallon as cars. Except that they're wildly dangerous, because they offer no protection in a crash, especially when everybody else is driving cars.

    We see the same story in cars all the time: they build a car that's little more than a motorcycle, and by taking away all of the protective (and heavy) metal, it gets huge MPG. Even if there is some sort of useful advance in the engine technology it's dwarfed by just getting rid of all the metal.

    So you can build a hydrogen motorcycle. So what? We knew it could be done. All you've done is to offer us a motorcycle that's very safe because you can't refuel it anywhere so you can't actually get it out of the driveway.