Hydrogen-Powered Suzuki Burgman

Suzuki has been banging the drum for hydrogen as a clean fuel for well over a decade and this year’s Tokyo Motor Show—renamed as the Japan Mobility Show for 2023—is where the company will show its latest hydrogen-powered prototype.

It’s a modified Burgman 400 scooter, and if that sounds familiar that’s because Suzuki has been showing various hydrogen-powered Burgman scooters since 2010. What’s changed, though, is how that hydrogen is being used. All of Suzuki’s previous hydrogen scooters, including multiple running prototypes and even a set of semi-production bikes used in an 18-month trial by the Metropolitan Police in London in 2017 to 2018, have used hydrogen fuel cells to power electric motors. The new prototype takes a completely different route and burns the hydrogen in a modified version of the existing Burgman 400′s single-cylinder internal combustion engine.

Related: Ask Kevin: Motorcycles, Fuels, and Climate Neutrality

Suzuki has flirted with hydrogen fuel cells since 2007 when it showed the Crosscage concept bike. Around the same time, it tied in with British company Intelligent Energy, which developed the fuel-cell system used in all the prototypes that followed. Fuel cells promise the clean-running benefits of electric power but with the ability to rapidly refuel hydrogen tanks rather than needing to recharge batteries. However, earlier this year Suzuki became a member of the HySE collaboration—alongside Honda, Yamaha, and Kawasaki—to develop hydrogen-fueled combustion engines for small vehicles, including motorcycles. Specifically, Suzuki’s role in the organization is “Element study on functionality, performance, and reliability of hydrogen-powered engines.” That’s where the new Burgman prototype comes in.

It’s built around a standard Burgman 400 scooter, although the engine needs some substantial modifications to run on hydrogen instead of gasoline. Details of those changes aren’t known now, but they’re likely to include direct fuel injection. The hydrogen itself is stored at 700 bar (around 10,000 psi) in a tank between the rider’s feet, fueled from a socket just below the right-hand side of the seat.

To make space for that tank, the swingarm and engine, which are a single unit, are moved backward by around 8 inches, giving the prototype its unusually long wheelbase. On the positive side, the bike doesn’t lose its underseat storage space, like the fuel-cell prototypes did.

You can read Kevin Cameron’s dive into the practicalities of hydrogen as a fuel for combustion engines here.