Last week, the French company Mob-Ion presented a model of its electric scooter that is powered by green hydrogen. The fuel system of the new scooter is especially remarkable. The hydrogen is actually stored in rechargeable refill cartridges.
Hydrogen cartridges
Each of the cartridges has an autonomous range of 15 kilometers. A scooter can have three or four of these stashed under its saddle, giving a total autonomous range of about 60 kilometers. The hydrogen feeds the fuel cells that produce the electrical energy to power the scooter.
Refuelling
The refill cartridges are the size of a kind of double-sized soda can. The great advantage of this is that the cartridges can be removed and put back in place in a jiffy. This replaceable system speeds up the process of ‘refueling’. According to the developers, the refill cartridges can be recharged indefinitely, even thousands of times, and are fully recyclable. They are filled with green hydrogen, i.e. hydrogen obtained using renewable energy. The initiators show how the scooter works in the video below:
Nowadays, most of the hydrogen is produced by means of reforming, from methane gas, which releases CO2. The disadvantage of green hydrogen is its price, which is two to three times higher than that of ‘grey’ hydrogen.
French-Swiss collaboration
The scooter was developed in collaboration with the Swiss company STOR-H Technologies, which is responsible for the technology for storing hydrogen in refill cartridges.
Mob-ion was founded in Paris in 2015 and focuses on the development of ‘green’ means of transport and energy storage.
Read about the first hydrogen-powered e-bike.
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