Yamaha is the first major manufacturer to give some credence to the theory that future motorcycles and other vehicles could be powered by water.
In 2016, the company commissioned industrial designer Maxime Lefebvre to provide a concept for a 2025 Yamaha motorcycle. That’s just five years away!
After three trial efforts, Yamaha has now officially released images of the prototype bike which looks like an original 1975 XT model but is powered by water.
They call it a closed-loop H2O engine powered by a water pump that continually cycles water.
However, Yamaha is short on technical details.
For example, they don’t say what powers the water pump. Maybe it’s a small electric motor.
Nor do they say what sort of power output it would deliver.
It all seems very mystical at the moment. Or is it?
Water and algae power
Two Dutch designers have built a wooden bike that runs on algae oil and a South American has invented a bike that runs 500km on one litre of water.
The Dutch wooden motorcycle runs on algae oil grown by scientist Peter Mooij as bio fuel.
Designer Titsert Mans thought it appropriate to put it in a bike made of sustainable materials such as wood.
They have written a book, The Thick Algae, to explain their principles.
Sao Paulo inventor Ricardo Azevedo says his T Power H20 bike can even run on polluted water.
It uses a car battery and the water to generate electricity and separate hydrogen from the water molecules. This results in internal engine combustion which powers the bike.
However, don’t hold your breath waiting for some of these technologies to come to your bike.
Ricardo’s bike was revealed back in 2015 and no manufacturer has yet taken up the challenge of introducing it to a production bike.
But change is surely coming and the internal-combustion-engine motorcycle is not dead yet!