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Power Transportation Science Technology

UK's Loughborough Uni Demos Hydrogen Motorcycle 121

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."
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UK's Loughborough Uni Demos Hydrogen Motorcycle

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  • LUFBRA (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:02AM (#25287541) Homepage Journal

    LUFBRA for the win!

    No, it is't pronounced "Loogabarooga".

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dintech ( 998802 )
      Of course. Everyone knows Loogabarooga is the university in the Jungle Book. One invents hydrogen motorcylces and the other eductates miscreant monkeys. I can see how it's easy to get confused though. :)
    • Re:LUFBRA (Score:5, Funny)

      by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:35AM (#25288091)

      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".

    • You're telling me that Lowg-burrow isn't right? I can't wait to tell all the guys in Glasgau and She-field.
    • LUFBRA for the win!

      No, it is't pronounced "Loogabarooga".

      And, here I was thinking it might be pronounced as "Low Brow". :-P

      Cheers

    • by Keill ( 920526 )

      Having spent most of my life in Loughborough - (I've since moved to Leeds) - I was really miffed when Craig Charles never called it Lugabruga, after a team from Loughborough Uni made it onto robot wars - I mean, if there's ONE person in the UK you want to hear say that word - it's him :p

  • Hydrogen Generation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by harl ( 84412 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:11AM (#25287693)

    What are the byproducts of producing the hydrogen?

    • Warm drinkable toxic chemicals?
    • Oxygen from the water they split it from, hopefully.
      • by harl ( 84412 )

        Don't forget the greenhouse gases from the fossil fuels used to split the water. Congrats you've moved from a gas powered cycle to a coal powered cycle.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by harl ( 84412 )

            Changing the end doesn't matter until you change the source.

            What you describe is simply a more expensive and more complex method of burning fossil fuels. Hydrogen is not a product of water. That's a lab experiment.

            Hydrogen is directly refined from fossil fuels. Let me repeat that. Hydrogen is directly refined from fossil fuels.

            Fixing the grid is significantly cheaper, simpler, and easier than what you describe.

            What you describe requires scrapping the entire infrastructure and every vehicle on the road.

        • Yes, but we've removed the oil powered cycle, which alleviates economic burden. There is a trade-off somewhere. You can't knock this because of our current method of producing electricity.
          • by harl ( 84412 )

            I can knock it based on our current method of hydrogen production.

            Hydrogen is directly refined from fossil fuels.

            It's a fossil fuel powered vehicle but with extra steps added to the energy supply chain in to increase waste.

            • What if the electricity was from coal? ~40-50% of our electricity production comes from coal, from what I remember.
              • by harl ( 84412 )

                I don't understand your point.

                There are two cases.

                1. Splitting water. No one does this because the efficiency sucks. But assuming you do. You have a very wasteful coal powered bike.

                2. Burn fossil fuel to produce steam to use to crack methane, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide, to produce hydrogen. You have a fossil fuel powered bike.

                In either case you're doing nothing green and nothing renewable. We need a clean source of power. Until then changing the end of the consumer end of the supply c

                • Using coal would be cheaper than using oil, since we import a large amount of our oil, and our coal is local. And those two cases are not the only cases. I'm currently doing research on algal hydrogen production, and it is a very viable third option. My point is, what do you think the point of creating electrical and hydrogen vehicles are if we're still using oil and coal to produce this electricity? How about confinement of pollution? How about reduction of energy transportation costs (although hydrog
                  • by harl ( 84412 )

                    I'm currently doing research on algal hydrogen production, and it is a very viable third option.

                    Lots of things are being worked on. Lots of them never see the light of day. You don't build an infrastructure on something that might be.

                    My point is, what do you think the point of creating electrical and hydrogen vehicles are if we're still using oil and coal to produce this electricity?

                    None. More gains would be made by spending those resources on switching over to nuclear power.

                    How about confinement of pollution?

                    That's an ambiguous sentence. Please elaborate.

                    How about reduction of energy transportation costs (although hydrogen may not be helping this)?

                    WTF? Seriously? Do you know people who want more?

                    How about vehicles that can use electricity and hydrogen efficiently for when we do improve clean coal?

                    If someone can figure out how burning fossil fuel can be made clean than this whole conversation is moot. We can do what ever we want until it runs out.

                    • by harl ( 84412 )

                      A small scale pioneer plant for photobiological hydrogen is set to be built here in Co.

                      That's not an infrastructure. That's a novelty. When you can support hundreds of millions of vehicles then you have an infrastructure.

                      So we might as well slash every effort to create electrical and hydrogen vehicles and focus our attention solely on switching to nuclear? Even in the midst of this "fuel crisis" you think it'd be better for the general populace to be consuming petroleum instead of electricity?

                      Consuming electricity or hydrogen is consuming petroleum. Both are generated from fossil fuels. That's the problem I've been trying to make clear.

                      If the petroleum vehicles that produce pollution are no longer producing pollution, that would confine existing pollution to areas in which power plants reside.

                      Power plants that will now spew more pollution than currently since we'd have to up production to meet the increased load. Can we put that power plant in your county? Would you be ok living within 20 miles of it?

                      That raises an

                    • by harl ( 84412 )

                      I didn't mean to say that the plant was infrastructure as of yet, the facilities that are in place and distribute the hydrogen are. The plant is simply on a smaller scale to gauge the production capabilities, and on the side provide minimal power. It's like a pilot to a TV series, get it?

                      The problem with pilots are they are unproven and many often fail early. Nuclear is an existing proven technology with an almost 70 year track record. It also interfaces directly with our existing infrastructure as opposed to requiring resources to be spend on a whole new infrastructure.

                      But the cost to the consumer per mile driven is less when electricity is used.

                      This means nothing to me. My goal is not to lower consumer transportation costs. I feel lowering the financial cost of commuting within the current model of 1 person per vehicle is damaging.

                      Focusing ourselves on one fuel source makes us vulnerable and inflexible.

                      That's why you focus on buildi

                    • by harl ( 84412 )

                      If reducing pollution, green house gas emission, and dependence on foreign energy supplies is fucking the consumer then yes.

                      Nuclear is already developed we'd merely be deploying it. 66 years or so since the first controlled reaction. There are countries that receive up to 90% of their electricity from nuclear and are energy exporters. Build extra capacity and sell it to Mexico and Canada.

                      Figure out how to use electricity in a car? Your behind the times. We already know how to do that. The problem is t

                • We need a clean source of power. Until then changing the end of the consumer end of the supply chain is a waste.

                  Hardly a waste. If we change the consumer end of the supply chain now to use something like hydrogen then when we perfect a clean source of power all we need to do is use it to make hydrogen and all of the infrastructure to distribute it is already there.

                  The alternative is to stick with petrol until we perfect clean power and then have to wait another 10-20 years to roll out the infrastructure to

                  • by harl ( 84412 )

                    Don't put the buggy before the horse.

                    Upgrading all vehicles and the entire infrastructure is incomprehensibly expensive and difficult. It gains us nothing. We've spent a better part of a century building and refining the infrastructure. Throwing that all away to simply burn fossil fuels in a different manner is the exact definition of waste.

                    Instead spend that money on clean power. Hook the clean power up to the grid. *poof* Every single item plugged into the grid is now "green." Then we can figure out

              • by xelah ( 176252 )
                It isn't 40-50% in Loughborough. It's more like 33% - the UK gets 39% from gas (the kind of gas that's a gas not the kind of gas that's a liquid) and 21% from nuclear. Besides, nasty stuff out of the top of a chimney is better than nasty stuff out of an exhaust in a built-up area.
        • Don't forget the greenhouse gases from the fossil fuels used to split the water. Congrats you've moved from a gas powered cycle to a coal powered cycle.

          Rubbish, I'll use magnets to split the water and then use the power from the hydrogen to recharge the magnets!

    • by dleigh ( 994882 )
      Assuming it's done by electrolysis of water, the only direct byproduct is oxygen. However it takes a lot of electricity to split water, so you have to consider the byproducts from the power generation. It would be an ideal use of home solar/wind power - assuming you make enough during the sunny/windy periods to get though the cloudy/still periods.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mini_razor ( 1306073 )
      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.
      • by harl ( 84412 )

        That's nice for that one bike. It's a novelty. Big fucking deal. Hydrogen generation at scale needed for mass production is fossil fuel powered.

        • Before long, however, we'll do electrolysis of water using electricity from nukes and clean sources.

          Fossil fuels are done -- get used to it. In 100 years we're gonna seem like the Victorians with their enthusiasm for steam (and lung disease), and science fiction writers will be writing "petro-punk."

          • by harl ( 84412 )

            No they're not. That's my point. I wish they were but every single hydrogen or electric solutions is simply a more inefficient way of burning fossil fuels. More inefficient because they all throw in extra steps.

            For example let's look at what you propose.

            Generate electricity from nuclear
            Split water into hydrogen and oxygen (highly inefficient which is why hydrogen is currently refined from fossil fuels)
            Burn hydrogen.

            As opposed to the following:

            Generate electricity from nuclear.
            Power car from electricity.

            A

            • For example let's look at what you propose.

              Generate electricity from nuclear
              Split water into hydrogen and oxygen (highly inefficient which is why hydrogen is currently refined from fossil fuels)
              Burn hydrogen.

              No, instead, let's power an electric car with a hydrogen fuel cell. Then, at the end of the fuel cell's life, dispose of the basically harmless components.

              As opposed to the following:

              Generate electricity from nuclear.
              Power car from electricity

              Then, at the end of the battery's life (and by b

              • by harl ( 84412 )

                No, instead, let's power an electric car with a hydrogen fuel cell. Then, at the end of the fuel cell's life, dispose of the basically harmless components.

                Just a minor question.
                How exactly does this fuel cell work? Where does the input energy come from? There is no magic box that produces hydrogen or electricity.

                But you do seem to have this consistent hard-on for direct electric vehicles.

                You couldn't be more wrong. One look at my posting history shows I abhor electric cars. I want us to clean the grid first. If you clean the grid every single thing in your house becomes "green". Electric and hydrogen cars are worse for the environment since they're fossil fuel powered cars. More expansive, less efficient fossil fuel powered car

          • I'm glad you said 100 years and didn't repeat one of those robot feel good statements like within the next 15 years or something.

            I ran some numbers relative to my experiences a while back and it is alarming at how long it would take just to replace passenger cars with something cleaner and not fossil fuel powered. I don't have my numbers and sources at hand, but It appears that in good economic times, about 6% of the passenger vehicles are replaced per year. This means if we had something today, it would ta

    • See, there's this thing called electricity. You get it from wind and solar panels. And if you run it through plain water, you get hydrogen and oxygen.
      • See, there's this thing called efficiency, and you lose some converting solar / wind to electricity and lose more when electricity is used to split water to O2 and H2.

        Seems like we'd be better off storing the wind / solar power right in a battery. Also gives us the chance to use nuclear power to charge those batteries, because nuclear can generate ALOT of reliable power... unlike solar or wind.

      • by harl ( 84412 )

        The majority of electricity comes from coal and natural gas. Congrats you still have a fossil fuel powered motor-cycle. Now with increased pollution from the strong acid/bases used as the electrolyte.

        Changing how the energy is used is meaningless until we change where the energy comes from.

      • See, there's this thing called electricity. You get it from wind and solar panels.

        Actually, you don't:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_the_United_Kingdom#Primary_energy_sources [wikipedia.org]

        Those figures are allegedly from 2007; the uk.gov web page that they're sourced from isn't there any more - probably because the department concerned has been renamed about three times recently.

        Even the most optimistic target for 2020 only has 20% (or 33% of electricity assuming that transport can't get to 20% by itself):
        http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/consultation/consultation_summary [berr.gov.uk]

        If elec

    • by Fred_A ( 10934 )

      I demoed a sandwich powered bicycle once but it never worked out because of potential gas emissions.

    • by phayes ( 202222 )
      All non-trivial amounts of Hydrogen are currently produced by cracking Natural Gas, aka Methane. See wikipedia's second paragraph on hydrogen [wikipedia.org].

      So, your supposedly green/clean water producing platform produces as much CO2 as a normal motorcycle.

      • If, and it's a big if I'll grant, you can raise the water vapor temperature to around 850 degrees cheaply (as in a nuclear power plant) then you can split the water vapor very efficiently and use hydrogen as a decent energy carrier.

        Until then, burning CNG on the bike is just as good a solution for overall carbon reduction.

        • by phayes ( 202222 )
          I see waaay too many people wishing away all the problems with converting to a hydrogen based economy by handwaving the big expensive problems away.

          By using nuclear energy to serve as a heat source to crack water vapor, you've removed the possibility of using that big expensive reactor to produce electricity relatively cheaply. I also doubt that the process has been debugged to the point where you could setup an industrial sized plant using it. Until the process has been industialized and commercial quanti

          • Why in the world would electrolyzing part of the steam remove the capability of the plant's main purpose of generating electricity? High-temperature electrolysis is a byproduct, not a primary goal for those types of plants that could produce hydrogen that way.

            • by phayes ( 202222 )

              No, it's not a byproduct of existing reactors. To allow temperatures and pressures that high they would have to be completely redesigned.
              Secondly, high pressure steam is extremely corrosive (There is a reason water has the nickname "the universal solvent"). Saying Gee, I don't see the problem, water is pretty innocuous at the temperatures I'm used to just shows how much you need to learn just to understand the problem, let alone the potential solutions.

              Last off, let me introduce you to the second law of the

              • You assume I'm talking about an existing rod fission reactor. I am talking about high-temperature fusion reactors. Take a look at the Sun. High temperatures are guaranteed from high-temperature hydrogen fusion. Hence the name.

                The heating of some water to steam, even 850 degree steam, wouldn't impact the heat of a 10**9 kelvins very damn much. Getting the water close enough to take advantage of the heat might be an issue. There are significant barriers to the high-temperature fusion plants themselves, too, b

                • by phayes ( 202222 )

                  Oh, I thought you were serious about the prospects of assisting the migration to a hydrogen based economy and being able to cheaply crack hydrogen from high temperature & pressure steam. Instead I see that your only interest is staring into the sun while you dream up stuff that somebody else somewhere in a land far far away should magically invent so you can say "wow, that's koool"...

                  My point, should you choose to tear your attention from that big ball of gas in the sky, was that hydrogen production pro

                  • Yay, we finally got to the personal attack and the accusation of a drug-induced altered mental state!

                    Now, if you've never read anything about tokamak [wikipedia.org] reactors or the NIF [wikipedia.org] (or other intertial confinement research), I suggest you do so.

                    Several [rsc.org] different [sciencedirect.com] research [72.14.205.104] projects [futurepundit.com] are working toward using HTE of water or HTE of water + CO2 (to produce methane gas), so it's not exactly pixie dust.

                    • So let's just forget about the future and keep burning petrol. The future will never come.

                      In case you didn't read the HTE links there, most of them believe they can make it work with less exotic tech than hot fusion. Hot fusion would pretty much guarantee it would work, but is probably not necessary.

                      Again, the total input is less than the total output, so there's no claim of violating the 2nd law which you keep saying I'm proposing. If hydrogen is the fuel of choice, then producing it will cost some energy.

                    • Just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it can't be made to work. In the 50's and 60's there were lots of crazy ideas like flying cars and protecting yourself from a nuclear weapon by hiding under your desk.

                      No kind of science gets done without the funds to do research and experimentation. Just because something's not immediately feasible doesn't mean it can't be investigated for application a decade or two in the future.

                      If you want something that's going to replace petroleum tomorrow, then I

  • Yay (Score:3, Informative)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:17AM (#25287785)

    Or... How propaganda and political meddling manage to send science research down blind alleys for 10 years.

    Sorry. The Hydrogen infrastructure not only isn't going to happen, it would be a disaster if it did.

     

    • The Hydrogen infrastructure not only isn't going to happen, it would be a disaster if it did.

      How is that? An extensive Hydrogen infrastructure could be fully integrated into the grid - you could just use liquid Hydrogen to cool some superconductors so you end up with a more efficient electrical infrastructure and a handy nationwide method for distributing Hydrogen. Additionally, this has the benefit of allowing for very centralized energy production without it being near large population centers making nuclear a much more palatable option.

    • Or... How propaganda and political meddling manage to send science research down blind alleys for 10 years.

      Science goes down dead ends plenty on it's own even without political meddling. Many if not most of the really big discoveries started out with blind discovery. Fleming discovered penicillin only by accident as a result of sloppy labwork, and when he did there was no indication that it would ever pan out. In fact, this wiki article I just read informs me that after disapointing trials, he gave up on it.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming#Work_before_penicillin [wikipedia.org]

      Sorry. The Hydrogen infrastructure not only isn't going to happen, it would be a disaster if it did.

      Thus spoke collin smith, world re

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by abigor ( 540274 )

      Oh come on, you can't make a comment like that and not explain it! Although given current methods for hydrogen production, I agree with you.

    • Nah this is just Loughborough, think of this as a slashvertisment. Loughborough is a fairly average university over here, that spends A LOT on advertising to big up its name, but its no red brick.

    • Agreed.

      There is enough electrical infrastructure around right now to do the job of refueling electric cars and the like. Why go through all the bother to rip apart all the old gas stations to install new pressurized tanks to hold all this hydrogen when all we have to do is use the same habits that we use for our cell phones with our cars.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    that someone has figured out a way to run an internal combustion engine on fuel and oxygen?

    I'm flabbergasted.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I have a motorcycle that runs on red herring, slated to be the replacement of fossil fuels and answer to all our portable energy needs.

  • Problem (Score:3, Funny)

    by philspear ( 1142299 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:31AM (#25288019)

    How do they keep it from floating away? Won't someone think of the humanity?!?!

    (Kidding, I know it won't, I'm assuming the hydrogen is compressed and won't provide lift as a result, and have heard all about how the hindenburg burned because of rocket fuel paint, so don't start)

  • Where can I buy one? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:38AM (#25288135)

    One of the biggest problem with non-gasoline powered vehicles is making them reasonably convenient. It's going to be very, very hard to get people to switch to electric cars that they must charge overnight and plan their daily miles accordingly. This bike looks to be just as convenient as a scooter and almost as good as a normal motorcycle. Getting 100 miles to a tank is close enough to what most riders are used to, so I don't see that being an impediment. Ditto for 3 minutes to fuel up. The 50 mph top speed is low for a motorcycle, but normal for many scooters. Given how much more popular scooters have been recently, there is definitely a market for a vehicle like this. Plus, this is a prototype, so I bet that making a bike that tops out at 80-90 mph and is capable of sustained freeway speeds is not a huge stretch.

    The only question left is how much does it cost in dollars per mile traveled? I know this is hugely dependent on how the hydrogen is created and therefore the cost of electricity, but all the green thoughts in the world mean nothing to the masses if it is much more expensive than gasoline.

    • by MrMr ( 219533 )
      I know this is hugely dependent on how the hydrogen is created and therefore the cost of electric
      Well, you could always hook up a dynamo to a home trainer and use that do the electrolysis.

      (For the humor impaired: please no thermodynamics here)
      • You laugh, but pedaling in a dry and comfortable location beats pedaling when there's ice and snow on the pedals.

    • by harl ( 84412 )

      I know this is hugely dependent on how the hydrogen is created

      Hydrogen is currently created by refining fossil fuels. This motorcycle is simply a less efficient way to burn fossil fuels.

    • Plus, this is a prototype, so I bet that making a bike that tops out at 80-90 mph and is capable of sustained freeway speeds is not a huge stretch.

      Er, yes it is, actually. What you have here is a very small, slow bike, much slower than the one I learned on as a teenager, and by the look of it with skinny tires and reduced mudguards to reduce weight and wind/rolling resistance. But the tank is the size of a large bike tank. You are in effect asking for a machine with about 4 times the hydrogen capacity, and

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @11:39AM (#25288153)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 )

      There are a lot of people who ride scooters that can't top 50 mph. Obviously you can't go on the freeway, but they are plenty powerful for regular city streets. They are especially useful in urban areas.

      • by pavon ( 30274 )

        I ride a 125cc scooter to work every day, which maxes out at around 60 MPH and it struggles getting to that last 10-15 MPH. Unless the fuel cell has a different power curve than a ICE, I wouldn't feel comfortable riding on a city streets where the traffic flowed faster than 30-35 MPH. Which might be fine in some cities, I don't know. Around here I need to go 40-45 MPH to keep up with traffic on the major non-residential streets.

        Besides, just from a point of terminology it does seem funny calling something t

    • I'm waiting to see whether Vectrix manage to get any traction. The Vectrix scooter has quite a lot of low down acceleration, a 62mph top speed, and lots of bodywork which make it look big on the road. To a car driver it just looks as if colliding with it would be a bad idea. (In fact it would, the battery pack is heavy.) It also has big disk brakes and proper motorcycle tyres. I can imagine myself commuting on one quite happily, but not on the overgrown pedal bike in the article. I'm afraid this hydrogen th
  • There has been a natural gas powered motorcycle for a while. http://www.poopreport.com/Images/Fun/Farttoy/farttoy2.jpg [poopreport.com]
  • How is all this hydrogen stored? From what I've seen elsewhere it's still the carbon canister kind of technology. I wouldn't feel all that peachy with that between my legs.
    • by BigGar' ( 411008 )

      Granted, you don't want the tank to leak, but you you don't want the 5 gallon's of gasoline to spray up onto you and burst into flames either.

      • That's true. I'm just thinking that given the same puncture, a hydrogen tank would explosively react, whereas a gas tank has a chance to simply leak (neither of which is a good outcome, but I'd rather smell like gas than take a rocket to the junk).
  • ...that hydrogen was measured in minutes. So, if we get 100 miles per three minutes of hydrogen, that's 2000 miles an hour! Awesome.
  • Can we please have a warning that we're going to be sent to a BBC flash player site?

    I don't know why, but it never plays, and manages to crash my browser (Firefox on Ubuntu) reliably 90% of the time when I go to close the tab.

    PDF and youtube links pale into insignificance beside whatever the BBC have managed to do to the interwebs with this abomination of a player...

    • by tolan-b ( 230077 )

      Most likely you're outside the UK and using an ad blocker.

      If you're using adblock+ then you can use this exception rule to get the BBC player to work:

      @@.doubleclick.net/*/DartShell$other,object-subrequest

      I think that's the one.

      As for the crashing, the problem is the Linux Flash player, it's in an awful state, lots of Flash videos are crashing FF for me atm. Apparently the v10 beta plugin is more stable, if a little glitchy.

      • Thanks - this did the trick perfectly. This particular crashing issue was definitely related to the BBC player, and this seems to have stopped it. Now we're back to the 'mere' 10% or so crash rate that we've all come to know and love anyway! :)

        Shame this is now such an old topic so nobody else will see it.

  • by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @12:17PM (#25288763) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Something like this [bbc.co.uk]? Looks like it's rather similar to existing vehicles to me.

    • 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.

      Better fuel economy, wildly more pollution.
      Every car built since 1975 has a catalytic converter.
      Cats on motorcycles are a relatively new and uncommon feature.

    • 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.

      Well it's no surprise that there's accidents if everyone is trying to control two vehicles at the same time.

  • I love how everyone is on the bandwagon for hydrogen as a clean renewable source for fuel but there is never EVER a discussion on the impact of Atmospheric Escape [wikipedia.org] of hydrogen. Unless you can guarantee that the Hydrogen burn is 100% effective, you will not be able to scale this as a fuel without increasing the oxidation of the atmosphere to unlivable amounts over time.

    Don't mean to troll here on the coolness factor of running an engine on water which was a previously bad thing to add to the fuel line. Can an

  • Uhhh, Safe? (Score:2, Insightful)

    Did anyone notice the front forks, brakes and wheel? Looks like they were taken from my downhill bike! Safe at 50mph? Hmm..

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