Two Dutch hydrogen pioneers have worked together with the Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen to develop a Hydrogen Range Extender. They call it the HyRange. Making it possible to run your electric scooter, bicycle or scooter longer on clean fuel.
The reason for the project is the energy transition facing the Netherlands and the rest of the world. Fossil fuels will make way for zero-emission alternatives and combustion engines will make way for electric engines.
The biggest challenge right now is still refueling hydrogen. “Since the infrastructure in the Netherlands is far from being able to make hydrogen widely available, we are still looking for an appropriate scalable solution there.”
Electric batteries are not the future
Most electric vehicles are supplied with electricity by batteries. The battery is charged via a charging station. Although this is better for the environment then fossil fuels, we can all agree that it has a number of drawbacks:
Relatively little energy can be taken along. ( ± 15km on a electric skateboard… we want more!)
As a result, the vehicle has a less range and / or motor power compared to fossil-powered vehicles.
The battery often has to charge for hours.
The battery contains rare metals.
Advantages of hydrogen
In an electric vehicle with a range extender, the electric current mainly comes from a fuel cell. This cell converts hydrogen gas (H2) into electricity on board the vehicle. Furthermore, only (pure) water is released during this conversion. A battery is not yet required for peak power and regenerative braking energy, but it is much smaller. By using the range extender:
Much more energy can be included, because energy in hydrogen is considerably more compact and lighter than the comparable amount of energy in batteries.
This allows the vehicle to have sufficient range and / or engine power, which is comparable to fossil-powered vehicles;
The hydrogen cylinder on board is charged in a few minutes;
A much smaller battery is needed, and perhaps not at all in the future;
Proof-of-Concept
As a Proof-of-Concept, they mounted the HyRange on a Xiaomi electric scooter. However, the HyRange is suitable for any 2-wheeled vehicle, from e-scooters to electric motorcycles. The project is still under development, and it looks very promising. Stay tuned via their (dutch) website: https://allesoverwaterstof.nl/hyrange/
Lots of us have much better range and much larger batteries than the standard board. For example, i’m pushing 65km per charge on 1.61kw
Fossil fuels still have the best power to weight ratio when you are dealing with 2 stroke motors, or forced induction . I’m very curious what power/weight ratios you’re pushing on Hydrogen?
My 1.6kw battery has a 4 hour charge at 8a. How much hydrogen does it take to travel 65km?
Correct. This is not to say that this will ALWAYS be the case. There are somewhat promising battery technologies in development involving salt water byproducts and solid state batteries that do not rare earth metal anode/electrodes. This may change the paradigm in our future.
What is the current cost of a hydrogen engine and storage tank?
This is a proof of concept showing how the future could be if we get to a certain point with technology. Please do not compare it to today’s range etc, of course batteries are still king.
If you have more information, I still would like to know where this technology stands right now.
This is interesting and exciting and it’s still salient info to have. I’m not dismissing this technology.
I genuinely would like to know if it’s accessible, even if it’s not (yet) practical.
Neat idea but at the end of the day a larger battery just makes a lot more sense than a range extender.
Hydrogen is much more expensive than electricity and is difficult to store.
Fuel cells do not provide the required power density so you still need a battery to act as a buffer. So in the end you are not really getting rid of any of the disadvantages that are listed for batteries (Fuel cells have a lot of the same disadvantages.)
The only reason hydrogen is being pushed for over battery technologies is fuel companies trying to continue clawing onto having a business. They can tell petrol based transport is going to die out and are trying to pivot to hydrogen by greenwashing their businesses and making use of their current distribution systems.
Given 95% of hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels. I would suggest they try to find a scalable and clean way of producing the fuel before touting it as a green energy.
I did a little bit of research into hydrogen fuel cells and such a while back, so details are a bit fuzzy. If I remember correctly though, the main difficulties in the technology were 1) lack of incentive for innovation from companies because hydrogen is 2) usually only 30-40% efficient on the higher end, and 3) it is very bothersome to transport and especially difficult to store in a cost effective manner.
I think hydrogen would be a cool technology for a larger vehicle (think bigger than a car, maybe large buses, metro maybe?) but for smaller vehicles, especially something like a skateboard/scooter, it doesn’t make much sense.
