MIT's electric vehicle team, which has a long track record of building and racing innovative electric vehicles, including cars and motorcycles, in international competitions at the professional level, is trying something completely different this year: The team is building a hydrogen-powered electric motorcycle, Using a fuel cell system, as a testbed for new hydrogen-based transportation.
The motorcycle successfully underwent its first full demo in October. It was designed as an open source platform that would make it possible to swap and test a variety of different components, and for others to try out their own versions based on plans that the team makes freely available online.
Aditya Mehrotra, who is leading the project, is a graduate student working with Alex Slocum Professor of Mechanical Engineering, the Walter M. May and A. Hazel May in Emerging Technologies. Mehrotra was studying energy systems and also loved motorcycles, he says, “so we came up with the idea of a hydrogen-powered bike. We did an evaluation study, and we thought this could actually work. We [decided to] Try to build it.”
Although battery-powered cars are a boon for the environment, they still face range limitations and have issues associated with lithium mining and its emissions, team members say. Therefore, the team was interested in exploring hydrogen-powered vehicles as a clean alternative, allowing for vehicles that can be quickly refilled just like gasoline-powered vehicles.
Unlike previous projects by the team, which has been part of MIT since 2005, this car will not be entered in races or competitions but will be presented at a variety of conferences. The team, made up of about a dozen students, has been building the prototype since January 2023. In October, they presented the bike at the Americas Hydrogen Summit, and in May they will travel to the Netherlands to present it at the World Hydrogen Summit. . In addition to the two hydrogen summits, the team plans to showcase its bike at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month.
“We hope to use this project as an opportunity to start conversations about ‘small hydrogen’ systems that could increase demand, which could lead to further infrastructure development,” says Mehrotra. Innovative applications for hydrogen.” He adds that in addition to these online presentations and information the team will provide, they are also working to publish papers in academic journals describing their project and the lessons learned from it, with the hope of making an “impact on the energy industry.”
The motorcycle took shape over the course of the year, piece by piece. “We got a couple of industry sponsors to donate components like the fuel cell and a lot of the key components of the system,” he says. They also received support from the MIT Energy Initiative, the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, and the MIT Edgerton Center.
Initial tests were done on a dynamometer, a type of motorized treadmill that Mehrotra described as an “imaginary road.” The car used battery power during its development, so that the fuel cell provided by the South Korean company Doosan could be delivered and installed. The space the group used to design and build the prototype, home to the EV team, is located in MIT's N51 building and is well-equipped to conduct detailed testing of each component of the bike as it is developed and integrated.
Elizabeth Brennan, a first-year mechanical engineering student, said she joined the team in January 2023 because she wanted to gain more experience in electrical engineering, “and I really fell in love with it.” She says the group members “really care and are really excited to be here and work on this bike and believe in the project.”
Brennan, the team's safety lead, learned about the safe handling methods required for the bike's hydrogen fuel, including the special tanks and connectors needed. The team initially used a commercially available electric motor for the prototype, but is now working on an improved version, designed from scratch, she says, “which gives us more flexibility.”
As part of the project, team members are developing a kind of textbook that describes what they did and how they carried out each step in the process of designing and manufacturing this hydrogen fuel cell electric bike. There is still no such motorcycle as a commercial product, although a few prototypes have been built.
This kind of guideline for the process “doesn’t exist,” Brennan says. She adds, “Much of the technological development of hydrogen is either done through simulation or is still in the prototype stages, because it is expensive to develop, and it is difficult to test this type of system.” One of the team's goals for the project is to make everything available as an open source design, and “we want to provide this bike as a platform for researchers and education, where researchers can test ideas in both limited space and funding.” environments.”
Unlike a design that was designed as a commercial product, Mehrotra says, “Ours is completely designed for research, so you can swap components in and out, and get real hardware data about how good your designs are.” He says this can help people implement their new design ideas and help move the industry forward.
He says the few prototypes some companies had previously developed were inefficient and expensive. “To our knowledge, we are the first company to be fully open source, thoroughly documented, tested, and released as a platform. [fuel cell] Motorcycle in the world. No one else has built a motorcycle and tested it to the level that we have, and documented it to the point that someone might actually be able to take this and scale it up in the future, or use it in research.
“Right now, this vehicle is affordable for research, but it is not yet affordable for commercial production because the fuel cell is a very large and expensive component,” he adds. Doosan Fuel Cell, which supplied the prototype of the bike, produces small, relatively lightweight fuel cells for use mostly in drones. The company also produces hydrogen storage and delivery systems.
Team member Annika Marschner, a second-year mechanical engineering student, says the project will continue to evolve. “It's kind of an ongoing thing, and as we develop it and make changes, and make it a stronger and better bike, it will continue to grow over the years, hopefully,” she says.
While the EV team has so far focused on battery-powered vehicles, “we're now looking at hydrogen because it seems like something that's been less explored than other technologies for making sustainable transportation,” Marschner says. “So, it seemed like an exciting thing for us to offer.” We spend our time and effort on this.
Getting everything to work was a long process. The team is using a frame from a 1999 motorcycle, while adding several custom-designed parts to support the electric motor, hydrogen tank, fuel cell, and driveline. “Making everything fit into the bike frame was definitely something we had to put a lot of thought into because there was limited space in there. So, it involved trying to figure out how to fit things in clever ways so there were no conflicts.
“A lot of people don't really envision hydrogen energy as something that could be used on roads, but the technology already exists,” Marschner says. She points out that Toyota and Hyundai have hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the market, and that some hydrogen fuel stations are located, most of them in California, Japan, and some European countries. But getting hydrogen, for the average consumer on the East Coast, is a very big challenge. “Infrastructure is definitely the biggest challenge right now for hydrogen vehicles,” she says.
She sees a bright future for hydrogen as a clean fuel to replace fossil fuels over time. “I think it has a lot of potential,” she says. “I think one of the biggest challenges of moving forward with hydrogen energy is actually developing these demonstration projects and showing that these things can work and that they can work well. So, we're really excited to continue that.”
