6 Motorized (And Green!) Bicycles

We’ve reviewed a bunch of motorized bikes recently, so I put together a list of some of the best ones.

All of these bikes are hybrid bikes, providing motorized assistance to traditional peddle power. None of these directly emissions (although some are electric, which indirectly create emissions), making these bikes a great green method of transportation.

So why continue paying for gas and producing emissions? Get yourself a green bike and save both money and the environment!

Reviews and links for the bikes after the break.

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Eggshells help create Hydrogen Fuel

eggshells

 You might want to start saving those eggshells from your breakfast, they could help make hydrogen fuel.

While you’re probably not going to be able to make it at home, Engineers at Ohio State have been using eggshells  to soak up carbon dioxide in a hydrogen-producing reaction. They explain that excess carbon dioxide has been a major problem, and have found that when the eggshells are ground-up, they can absorb carbon dioxide. The process is explained as follows:

That brought them to eggshells, which mostly consist of calcium carbonate — one of nature’s most absorbent materials. It is a common ingredient in calcium supplements and antacids. With heat processing, calcium carbonate becomes calcium oxide, which will then absorb any acidic gas, such as carbon dioxide.

The eggshells absorb up to 78% of the carbon dioxide, being the most effective carbon-dioxide absorber to date. The best part, eggshells are a 100% green material. No complicated or dangerous chemicals, no emissions. It’s a massively plentiful resource too, according to the ENN article, nearly 91 billion eggs were produced, which is about 455,000 tons of shell, that’s a heck of a lot carbon-sucking power!

Researchers came upwith another benefit of the shells as well, in order to use them for hydrogen production, that filmy layer on the inside of the shell has to be removed. They developed an organic acid to accomplish this and collect the collagen. This collagen can fetch big bucks , so in addition to producing hydrogen, we’ve got a great money maker too.

With hydrogen looking to become a major source of fuel in the near future, we could very well see eggs becoming pretty valuable, or maybe we’ll just have to sort our garbage for eggshells too!

…oh, and apparently eggs are good for you or something too….

via ENN

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Pearl Hydrogen’s Fuel-Cell Bike

Pearl Hydrogen Bike

 There’s a lot of buzz around hydrogen fuel-cells, but until now it’s been mostly focused on cars.

Chinese company “Pearl Hydrogen” is aiming to bring fuel-cell technology to the already green realm of bicycles. Why mess with an invention that already boasts one of the greenest methods of transportation? Sometimes you need a bit of motorized help.

This fuel-cell bike has a range of up to 100km, and a top speed of around 25km. Pretty good for a bike. It’s a little expensive right now at $2600, although that’s about the same as other motorized eco-bikes we’ve reviewed. The company claims they expect to reduce this price by up to 80% however, bringing the price to just over $500. Not bad.

These motorized bikes are fantastic methods of transportation, and with hydrogen fuel-cells, are 100% green as well. Hydrogen is a bit hard to find at the moment, as there is little in the way of distribution, but Pearl Hydrogen claims they have a distributer set up to sell hydrogen to it’s customers.

If the price really does come down to around $500, we could finally see a motorized bike that could gain some mass adoption. A lot of people will not likely want to give up their cars completely, but if you can make the majority of your short and medium length trips on a bike, you’ll be saving a huge amount of money in gas, and saving tons of emissions as well.

Now I’d like to see a fuel-cell powered Shopcycle, then almost all of my trips could be green!

Pearl Hydrogen Bike

via Treehugger, Green Options

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FCHV: 480-Mile Range Fuel Cell Vehicle from Toyota

480mile range car

Toyota has made some great progress with fuel-cell vehicles lately, and it’s just tested the newest version of it’s next generation fuel-cell vehicle, the FCHV.

The hydrogen fuel-cell car has a reported range of a whopping 480 miles! In tests, it was able to make a trip from Osaka to Tokyo, a 350 miles trip, and finished with 30% of it’s tank left.

While a lot of this range is based on a large tank (about twice as big as it’s predecessor), Toyota has made great strides in efficiency as well, improving 25% over the previous model.

A 480-mile range is a great advancement in fuel-cell vehicles, as it approaches the range of modern hybrid car. Just doing some quick math, we see that a 45mpg 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid, with a 12.3 gallon tank, has a maxiumi potential range of about 553 miles.

So it appears hydrogen has finally reached the efficiency of modern gas vehicles. Now that the technology is finally here, the infrastructure is now the biggest hurdle to a consumerized version, but we’re on our way!

via Engadget, Reuters

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