Hydrogen-powered bikes offered as green alternative in G7 summit
Bike needs a couple of minutes to be fueled up with hydrogen and promises a 150 kilometres range.
BIARRITZ (Reuters) - At first it looks just like any electric bike but under the frame it’s completely different. An innovative bike powered by hydrogen rolled onto the G7 summit to help the many journalists with their transport woes in the southwest French town of Biarritz.
Built by Biarritz-based Pragma Industries, the bikes need only a couple of minutes to be fueled up with hydrogen and promises a 150 kilometres range (93 miles).
It was a technology challenge to make a fuel cell fit in the frame of the bike but for Pragma Industries Pierre Forte, these are the first commercially available electrically assisted bike with a fuel cell.
The bike, which theoretically costs approximately the same as a small city car, is not for sale. But its creators hope to equip cities with it around France and overseas, by setting up bike-sharing schemes for commuters.
The 200 bikes were presented to French Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne on Thursday (August 22) and its developers hope the G7 will be a real-size experiment with the 2,000 journalists fighting for a ride on the hydrogen-powered bicycle.
