What to know about China’s push for hydrogen-powered transportation

3 months ago admin

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of hydrogen-powered vehicles but never seen one. Over 18,000 are in the US, almost exclusively in California. On the outside they look just like traditional vehicles,…

So when I learned that in parts of China, companies are putting hydrogen-powered bikes on the road for anyone to ride, it was a real “the future is here” moment for me. I looked deeper into it and wrote a story.

These bikes have water-bottle-sized hydrogen tanks, which can make them easier than regular bikes to ride, though the tanks have to be swapped out every 40 miles. But they haven’t exactly been getting rave reviews. One rider in Shanghai told me the speed boost from hydrogen felt lacking, and the user experience was hurt by hardware and software design flaws. Many people on social media agree with him.

Youon, one of the largest players in China’s bike-sharing industry, has thrown its support behind hydrogen energy. It has put thousands of hydrogen-powered bikes in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, in the hopes of kick-starting a trend.

But for clean energy experts, it’s a head-scratcher as to why these hydrogen bikes are being promoted in the first place: Hydrogen bikes are less efficient than ordinary e-bikes, and they won’t make much economic sense in the long run.

It’s not just one company taking this path. The collective appetite for hydrogen bikes has been much bigger than I expected. By my own counting, Youon has half a dozen competitors in the hydrogen bike field, and several cities have embraced the idea. While the future of hydrogen-powered shared bikes is uncertain, their proliferation represents a much larger trend happening in China: exploring how hydrogen can be used in transportation.

It’s no secret that China has already become a world leader in producing affordable and capable electric vehicles, but the Chinese government and companies aren’t stopping there. A significant number of local policies have been set up in recent years to subsidize the production of hydrogen vehicles, waive toll fees for them, and build more refuel stations for hydrogen. Now China has about 21,000 hydrogen vehicles on the road and more than 400 refuel stations.