China’s noble hydrogen hopes for bike-sharing sector hit pothole as recall leaves outlook inert

China’s hankering to harness the power of hydrogen has expanded to the bike-sharing industry – with a number of cities offering cyclists easy-to-ride bikes powered by low-emission fuel – but the road has been a bumpy one.

More than a year into a trial run in suburban Shanghai, shared hydrogen-powered bikes were recently recalled amid complaints about various technical failures, according to local users and the bike’s manufacturer, Youon Technology.

Compared with conventional electric bikes that use lithium batteries, those powered by hydrogen fuel cells are meant to offer advantages such as faster recharge times and longer service lives, while also being more environmentally friendly – producing only water during operation.

But the ones that residents have seen rolling through the streets of Lingang since the autumn of 2022 are now being subjected to “certain adjustments”, an online customer service representative for Youon said on Monday.

Lingang, a tech hub in southeast Shanghai, is among a number of areas in China promoting eco-friendly shared bikes amid the country’s efforts to curb pollution while striving to cultivate a low-carbon, tech-driven economy.

Such bikes can also be found in other cities such as Lijiang in Yunnan province, Duanzhou in Guangdong province, and Xiaoyi in Shanxi province, according to local media reports.

About 1,500 hydrogen bikes had been made available in Lingang, according to a report last month in Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper, which cited Youon sources. The company did not reply to the Post’s request for an official comment.

Lingang resident Wang Xu said the bikes disappeared from the streets last weekend after people took to social media to complain.

“I rode this bike three times – the first two times it ran out of power in the middle of my ride. And the third time, I had trouble returning it,” he said.

“You might only need a 10-minute ride, but it could take you 20 minutes to successfully close the order … I had already brought the bike to the designated parking area, but the app insisted I had not [returned it] and continued charging me.”

Accelerating growth in the hydrogen industry was included in China’s government work report this year for the first time, as Beijing seeks to reduce reliance on oil imports amid geopolitical uncertainties and to meet its carbon-emission targets.

The sector is also regarded as a source of new economic growth, following China’s success with electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells.

Besides bikes, most hydrogen-powered vehicles now in commercial use are trucks, as they can traverse farther and are easier to refill than those powered by lithium batteries.

However, “hydrogen vehicles are generally not yet competitive compared with electric vehicles because, despite being a zero‑carbon energy source, hydrogen still has high costs in production, storage, as well as transport”, said Lin Boqiang, head of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy at Xiamen University.

Noting that most of the hydrogen in use in China is still made from polluting materials such as natural gas or coal, Lin said the country needs to look for more environmentally friendly ways to produce it.

“It’s a new area that deserves patience,” he said, estimating that a relatively mature market may not manifest for another decade or so.

China aims to bring 50,000 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to its roads by 2025, with a number of hydrogen refuelling stations, according to the government’s development plan for hydrogen for the 2021-35 period, issued in 2022.

The plan also aims to produce 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen using renewable feedstock resources per year, by 2025.