Hydrogen

Suggestively-named UK company Viritech has announced that it's making an altogether different kind of male enhancement supplement than we'd have expected, in the form of a hydrogen-powered hypercar called the Apricale.

It's going to take decades to get aviation, shipping and long-haul transport down to zero emissions – but an interim solution is about to hit the market that can clean up big transport straight away, with no fleet changes – albeit in a strange way.

Segway-Ninebot has rather sensationally announced that it's building a hydrogen fuel cell sportsbike – and boy does this thing look like it glitched its way out of Cyberpunk 2077, complete with a highly improbable steering design and an amazing price.

Scientists have now demonstrated a new type of artificial photosynthesis technology that can not only produce clean hydrogen fuel, but undergo morphological changes during use that makes it become more efficient over time.

Enegix Energy is moving forward with plans to build a huge clean hydrogen plant on the North-East coast of Brazil. The US$5.4-billion Base One project would transform solar and wind power into more than 600 million kg of green hydrogen annually.

Last year, Yanmar announced that it was looking at developing a maritime system using hydrogen fuel cells from Toyota's Mirai production line. Now a passenger boat prototype has hit the water off the coast of Kunisaki in the Oita Prefecture in Japan.

On a scale that’s hard to fathom, the universe is structured like a “cosmic web." Astronomers have now directly observed light from filaments in this web, by staring at a patch of sky with a deep-field telescope to detect faint dwarf galaxies.

A growing body of evidence points to the Red Planet being much bluer in its ancient past. Where all that water went is a key question, with many scientists believing it escaped into space. New analysis suggests another answer: it retreated underground.

Israeli company H2Pro claims its highly efficient water-splitting technology will deliver green hydrogen at less than US$1 per kilogram before 2030. That would leapfrog current projections by 20 years, and spark green revolutions in many industries.

Liquid hydrogen could be a revolutionary technology in clean aviation, and AeroDelft from the Netherlands is working hard to get the first liquid hydrogen fuel cell aircraft in the air. The Phoenix will fly 2,000 km on a 10-kg tank of liquid H2.

In order to promote hydrogen developments outside its own product lineup, Toyota has packaged up a fuel cell module you can buy more or less like a crate engine, ready to plumb into whatever device you'd like to power with hydrogen.

HyPoint's "turbo" fuel cells promise 3x the power output of regular designs, with 4x the lifespan and a range of other benefits that make them ideal for long-range hydrogen aircraft and eVTOLs. We speak to the CEO about the company's progress and plans.