Forget Tesla and Ford, Japanese motorcycling shows real cooperation

Aug 31, 2023

If you’re looking for manufacturers working towards the common good, look at the steps Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha are taking in the hydrogen space

As commendable as the recent cooperative agreement allowing Ford EVs to be recharged at Tesla Supercharger stations is — and it really is groundbreaking, considering the fierce rivalry between automakers — it smacks a little of desperation. First, there's the fact Ford's attempt to create, cobble together, and/or buy into a charging network has been pretty dismal. Blame the absolutely terrible record of independents building charging networks — slow roll-out, woeful reliability, and unnecessarily obtuse billing methods — but the fact remains the agreement has been made only well after Ford got into the electric-vehicle business.

Second, it must be said Ford might be especially desperate for some good charging news. Besides the aforementioned less-than-stellar infrastructure, it is also worth noting the company's 400-volt battery architecture is the slowest charging system among current EVs, save perhaps Toyota's truly somnolent BZ4X.

The Blue Oval's leading battery-powered products are amongst the best-driving and best-built electric vehicles in North America — see Range Finder's road tests of the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning — but taking either on a long-distance road trip would require patience that would make Job jealous. So, as commendable as the tie-up is, it's not surprising that it is Dearborn that had to make the corporate comedown.

If you want to see true forward-thinking inter-corporation cooperation aimed at reducing tailpipe emissions, you’ll have to instead look to Japan and its motorcycle industry. To wit: earlier this month, all four of Japan's major motorcycle manufacturers — Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha — formed a technological research association called HySE (Hydrogen Small mobility & Engine technology) to develop hydrogen-powered engines for "small mobility."

Such cooperation is virtually non-existent in the corporate world. Or at least the corporate world I’ve worked in. Electric-vehicle manufacturers — including Tesla — have talked about creating battery-swapping stations, some of which would use universal batteries so that owners of all EV brands could avoid range anxiety. So far, only China's Nio swaps battery assemblies, and, even then, only its own.

Nor is this "me, myself, and I" new to the automotive industry. The current North American fleet has thousands of part numbers for products — brake pads, spark plugs, etc. — that could be easily shared. In fact, other than a few rarities — automatic transmissions, for instance, and, of course, when one manufacturer, say Subaru, buys a complete car from Toyota — there has been very little working for the common good amongst automakers. In other words, the Hydrogen Small mobility & Engine technology organization is a big deal.

And HySE is no marketing bluff — y’know, all high-minded agreements and no actual work. The plan it lays out is concrete, its assignments specific. Nor is it even narrow-focused on just making sure engine and/or infrastructure needs are met before everyone goes their separate ways.

It's the opposite, in fact. For instance, research on the future of hydrogen-fueled combustion engines will fall to Honda, the world's most prolific manufacturer of internal-combustion engines and the leader of the group in model-based research. "Element study" on functionality, performance, and reliability of said engines will fall to Suzuki, whom I can attest from personal experience does in fact build the world's most reliable motorcycle engines. "Hands-on" research, meanwhile, falls to Yamaha and Kawasaki, both of which have previous experience in building hydrogen-fueled ICEs — the former having engineered an H-ICE version of Toyota's powerful 5.0-litre V8; and the latter recently having built prototypes of a clean, green version of its H2 "super" tourer powered by a 1,000-cc supercharged inline-four and, of course, hydrogen.

Nor, again, is HySE just about the "fast flame speeds" and "unstable combustion" that result from ICE-ing hydrogen. Yamaha, for instance, will also be studying "the requirements for a hydrogen-refueling system and hydrogen tanks for small mobility." Kawasaki, meanwhile, will devote extra energy to "studying the auxiliary equipment required for a fuel-supply system and tanks, and the equipment installed between the fuel tank and the injector." That is, in current parlance, the fuel tank, the fuel pump, and the electronic fuel injection system.

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In truth, the latter two — as Hydra Energy revealed in Driving into the Future's recent hydrogen discussion panel — should be relatively simple. As might be expected, it will be the fuel tank that will be the real problem, containing high-pressure hydrogen in safe and sufficient quantities absolutely crucial to the success of hydrogen-fueled ICEs. Here, once again, the bike manufacturers’ humility and willingness to cooperate impresses because, instead of pridefully starting from scratch, they invited an outsider — Toyota — to join in their ambitions.

The reason Toyota's involvement is essential has only become apparent since HySE's introduction. Just last week, in a seemingly much-ignored press missive, came word that the company's hydrogen-fueled turbocharged 1.5L GR Corolla H2 had finished the 2023 Fuji 24-hour endurance race using a liquid-hydrogen fuel system.

This last is extremely important. For one thing, it is to my knowledge the first use of liquid hydrogen to fuel an ICE-powered vehicle. Or, at least, the first comprehensive test — 24-hour races being the ultra-marathons of motor racing — of liquid hydrogen to fuel an ICE-powered racer.

The second thing is that liquid hydrogen may prove crucial to the viability of H-ICEs. Succinctly put, hydrogen-fueled ICEs, like BEVs, have range issues. While hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles can routinely exceed the range of BEVs, combusting the lighter-than-air gas is not as efficient. Using the same 5.6-kilogram "tank" that blesses Toyota's Mirai with more than 640 EPA-certified kilometres of range — a boast Toyota backed up in 2021 by driving its FCEV a record 1,003 kilometres on a single charge — an H2-powered Corolla GR would struggle to eke out half of that.

The answer, then, is to increase the amount of gaseous hydrogen on board, a feat perhaps possible for something like a pickup truck or an 18-wheeler, but much more difficult for a compact sedan, and virtually impossible for a motorcycle. The hydrogen-fueled Kawasaki H2 in the photos above, for instance, has both its saddlebags — usually devoted to clothes, toiletries, etc. — stuffed full of supplementary hydrogen tanks.

And while the researchers will no doubt devote many resources to improving the efficiency of combustion, the fact remains the thermal efficiency of hydrogen-fueled ICEs is already about equal to those of gas-fed internal-combustion engines. In other words, the problem isn't just internal-combustion engine inefficiency, but that gaseous hydrogen may not be energy-dense enough for use in internal-combustion engines. Or, at least, not in ICEs aimed at "small mobility."

Enter Toyota and its liquid hydrogen-powered GR Corolla H2. Details are sparse, but it appears the liquid-fueled racing Corolla was able to run twice as long between fuel stops as its gaseous cousin while still refuelling in the same short 90-second pit stop (H-ICEs may suffer range limitations, but they are less anxiety-inducing than BEVs because they can be refueled in about the same time as a conventional, gas-powered automobile).

Toyota's testing is only the beginning. Liquid hydrogen as a mobility fuel has many challenges, not the least of which is that hydrogen must remain supercooled (-252.8C) if it is to remain liquid. This, says Toyota, poses unique challenges, not the least of which is developing a fuel pump that can function in such a low-temperature environment; and, the big bugaboo of storing liquified hydrogen, the natural evaporation of the stuff as the Corolla's fuel tanks heat up. And, big surprise, liquid hydrogen requires even more energy in its creation than the gaseous variety.

But that's why the five best "minds" in Japanese internal-combustion — the four motorcycle makers and Toyota — are now cooperating. And why the bike industry is a much better example of working towards the "common good" than Ford's tie-up-of-convenience with Tesla.

Author's note: As to the why the HySE association is putting all this effort into engineering internal-combustion engines fueled by hydrogen, it is that the motorcycle industry, after much research into electrification, has determined that batteries, because of their relatively low energy-density, are not really suitable for high-performance motorcycles.

Simply put, an electric motorcycle with a range comparable to its ICE-powered equivalent would weigh twice as much. Or conversely, a BEV with the same weight would have probably less than a third of the range. Harley-Davidson's Livewire, for instance, has a highway range of just 120 kilometres; and Energica's Experia, supposedly aimed at the touring segment, struggles to surpass 200 kilometres at high speed.

That is why, unlike the auto segment, electric motorcycles have had no impact in the over-600-cc market. In 2021 — the last time I did the research — there were probably fewer than 5,000 full-sized electric motorcycles sold worldwide by all manufacturers. In other words, if full-sized motorcycles are going to green before 2035, some equally emissions-free technology will have to be found. The Japanese manufacturers are betting hydrogen is the solution, while European marques — KTM and Ducati, most notably — think "net-zero" synthetic fuels are the answer.

Canada's leading automotive journalists with over 20+ years of experience in covering the industry

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