A Chinese company has recently added 3,000 hydrogen-powered bicycles to its bike-share scheme in Chengdu’s Xindu district. This follows a smaller pilot scheme of 500 bikes it introduced last year and makes Xindu the first location in China to launch large-scale implementation of hydrogen-powered transport.
As of 21 July, over 200,000 users had registered for an account on the Sichuan Qinglv Technology mobile app, according to the Sichuan Daily. More than 1.06 million rides were logged, with a total of over 2.5 million kilometres travelled, the outlet reported. Over the next few months, Qinglv plans to roll out a total of 15,000 such bikes in the district.
Chengdu is among a growing number of cities trialling hydrogen-powered bike-shares as part of broader efforts to decarbonise urban transport in China. Similar initiatives have already been launched in Chengdu, Changzhou, Yancheng and Huangshi.
Such bikes are powered by hydrogen storage reservoirs that feed into fuel cells which convert hydrogen into electricity. The Qinglv bike’s hydrogen fuel cell system has been installed beneath its seat and stores around 100 grams of hydrogen – enough to power the bike at speeds of up to 25 km/h for four hours.
Cost still remains a barrier to wider adoption. Most hydrogen bikes on the market are priced at around CNY 10,000 (USD 1,375) – 2-3 times that of lithium-ion battery-powered bikes, according to People’s Daily. However, this is offset by the slower depreciation of solid-state hydrogen storage, which can go through thousands of cycles, compared to just hundreds for lithium-ion batteries.
Huang Yuyu, vice president of a hydrogen-focused investment firm, said that hydrogen-bike technology has advanced rapidly over the past two years, significantly reducing supply chain costs. He expects the price of a hydrogen bike to fall to around CNY 4,000 (USD 550) within the next two years, which would make them more competitive against lithium-ion battery-powered counterparts.
Another challenge is regulation. Unlike lithium-ion, “currently, there are neither product standards nor operational specifications for hydrogen-powered bicycles”, said Zhang Xiang, dean of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute at Jiangxi New Energy Science and Technology Vocational College. He noted that just a few institutions are researching and discussing these matters.
Read Dialogue Earth’s previous analysis on why cheap hydrogen produced from industrial by-products might contain a risk of locking in carbon emissions.