Intelligent Energy Launches Fuel-Cell Motorbike

LONDON, UK (March 22) - A British firm has unveiled the ENV, the world’s first purpose-built, fuel-cell motorbike - ahead of any of the world’s leading automotive companies. The ENV bike is the creation of Intelligent Energy, an energy solutions company. The ENV (Emissions Neutral Vehicle) bike was designed to Intelligent Energy’s brief by a team, led by multi-award-winning designers Seymourpowell. The ENV bike is fully-functioning and has been engineered and purpose-built (based around Intelligent Energy’s CORE fuel cell) demonstrating the real, everyday applicability of fuel cell technology. The CORE, which is completely detachable from the bike, is a radically compact and efficient fuel cell, capable of powering anything from a motorboat to a small domestic property. The Intelligent Energy CORE is a PEM-type fuel cell – Simply put, each fuel cell is a multi-layered sandwich of plates and MEAs (Membrane Electrode Assemblies), in which the MEA acts as a catalyst during an electro-chemical reaction, producing water and electricity from hydrogen and oxygen. The water by-product points to the usefulness of the technology in heat and power applications, such as the home. The water by-product can be evaporated, drained or drunk, as it was, for example, by the astronauts of the Apollo missions. NASA were the first real users of fuel cell technology in the 1950s and 60s – a century after its first invention by Welsh lawyer Sir William Grove.