Bikes Come Clean: Hydrogen Power for Two Wheels

Bikes Come Clean Hydrogen Power for Two Wheels
Britain's Bovingdon airfield was the home of General Eisenhower's personl aircraftduring the Second World War; this week it was home to a revolutionary motor cycle.

British company Intelligent Energy invited motoring.co.za's sister London publication The Independent to road-test its revolutionary hydrogen fuel-cell motorcycle on the huge runways where B17s once landed.

The off-road location was needed because the ENV (Emissions Neutral Vehicle) is a prototype that can't legally be ridden on the street.

Only two of these astonishing two-wheelers exist and when I arrived they were sprinting in parallel along the perimeter road.

The ENV looks like one of the speeder bikes ridden by Darth Vader's Imperial scouts in "Return of the Jedi" and its smooth power delivery makes it seem to glide rather than roll.

This impression of gossamer lightness is so realistic that it would not have felt strange had the bikes gone airborne.

The reason is simple: The human brain associates motorised transport with noise but, even at 80km/h, the only audible evidence of the ENVs' passing was a low-intensity hum.

Above me, a skylark hung warbling in the air, blithely unconcerned by the thrilling display of ecologically friendly technology below.

Journalists who saw the ENV at its launch at the Design Museum on March 15 but didn't