Everything You Need To Know About Kawasaki's New Hydrogen Powered Motorcycle
At the Kawasaki Heavy Industries Group Vision 2030 Progress Report meeting, the company teased a new vehicle that's sure to get the interest of motorcycle fans: a hydrogen-powered bike. Hydrogen-powered cars are not a new concept and companies like Honda have produced cars like the Honda Clarity before. Motorcycles, however, are a different story. The inherent weight and space difficulties presented by your average motorcycle make storing usable amounts of oxygen difficult.
That hasn't stopped Kawasaki from shooting for the hydrogen-powered stars. As of now, the supposed future bike is in the concept stage and Kawasaki hasn't announced anything close to a production model or anything past the most tentative timeline of 2030. However, you can still glean some interesting and potentially exciting information from the concept images Kawasaki shared at the meeting.
Making hydrogen power viable in smaller applications like motorcycles, side-by-sides, ATVs, or even mopeds can not only revolutionize the power sports industry but potentially greatly reduce emissions from areas where those forms of transportation are more readily available than cars.
Kawasaki's hydrogen-powered sport bike
Judging from concept images, the hydrogen-powered bike won't be small and shares a similar form factor to a sport touring bike, giant hydrogen tanks notwithstanding. Additionally, the text on the side gives more clues, notably "HySE' which refers to Hydrogen Small mobility and Engine technology. This is Kawasaki's in-house name for the small hydrogen engines it's working to develop. "H2" means it's based on a Kawasaki Ninja H2 "Hypersport" bike, according to a Kawasaki press release from when Kawasaki first mentioned the idea of the bike in 2022.
There's still a lot of development to be done before everyone starts filling up their bikes with hydrogen and Kawasaki hasn't even released much of anything aside from a mockup. But the mere fact a serious small engine developer thinks the technology is good enough to power a Ninja, one of the most iconic sportbikes around, much less worthwhile at all, ought to be exciting. Of course, the only way to know for sure whether or not hydrogen bikes are the future or not would be to actually ride one.