A British technology company and Suzuki Motor will today unveil the Crosscage – a hydrogen-powered motorcycle that its developers claim will bring closer the dream of totally green driving.

The motorbike, which runs in almost complete silence and emits pure water, is a joint venture between the Loughborough-based Intelligent Energy and Suzuki, the Japanese titan of motorcycles and scooters.

Although a variety of companies, including Intelligent Energy itself, have been pursuing the idea of a fuel cell-powered motorbike for several years, mass-production has eluded everyone’s grasp.

It is believed that the cheapest fuel cell car would sell for about $1 million (£500,000). Moreover, until now nobody has managed to build a commercially viable motorbike. The Crosscage, its designers argue, therefore represents a huge breakthrough.

By combining Suzuki’s capacity for mass-production and a lightweight, air-cooled fuel cell designed by Intelligent Energy, the Crosscage may offer a fuel cell vehicle that might be affordable to many people.

If Toyota succeeds in its recently stated goal of producing a fuel cell car costing $60,000, Phil Caldwell, director of Intelligent Energy, said that a fuel cell-powered bike might cost a fraction of that sum.

The Crosscage is expected to take centre stage at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens today amid a rapidly spiralling green technology “arms race” between the world’s automotive giants.

In the race to build the world’s first commercially viable fuel cell car, Honda, Toyota and Japan’s other big carmakers are pouring a combined 2.3 trillion yen (£9.8 billion) into development next year alone.

The Tokyo Motor Show is tipped to have an unprecedented focus on greener driving: hybrid cars will abound and Honda will use the event to exhibit the Puyo, a concept fuel cell car that remains many years from the showroom. Honda expects to build 400,000 fuel cell cars a year by 2020. Another concept car, the FCX, is almost identical to the version that will go on sale in Japan and America next year. It can reach 62mph in less than ten seconds – on a par with a 2.4litre petrol saloon – and has a range of about 350 miles.

Much of the focus of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has been on designing them into cars, but the relatively lower costs involved in building motorbikes could see them commercialised far sooner.

“Bikes are an inherently simpler machine and are ideal for a fuel cell power system. They may ultimately be more affordable as the first hydrogen-fuelled vehicles that will appear on our roads,” Mr Caldwell said.

Yet, as Intelligent Energy and other players in the fuel cell industry admit, lowering the cost of building the vehicle itself is only half the problem.

Between tomorrow’s event and roads filled with fuel cell motorbikes, analysts say, lies a “chicken and egg” problem to which nobody has a solution.

Mass-production, even of a bike like the Crosscage, will begin only when Suzuki and rivals such as Yamaha and Honda can be confident that they have a market that is ready to ride them.

That market is unlikely to exist until there is a decent, reliable infrastructure able to deliver hydrogen in the same way that petrol and diesel are sold to drivers with combustion engines.

The infrastructure, in turn, is unlikely to be built with any great enthusiasm until potential hydrogen suppliers can be sure that there will be enough fuel cell vehicles on the roads to make the investment worth it, and the cycle begins again.

Some believe that one answer may lie in the mass installation of “reformers” – machines that would attach to existing petrol pumps and extract the hydrogen from a small quantity of fuel for delivery to the fuel cell.

The power

— In 1839 Sir William Grove invented the gas voltaic battery

— Renamed the fuel cell 50 years later, the principle is the same – they convert hydrogen and oxygen into water, producing electricity at the same time

— Cost and size have been a barrier to mainstream production of fuel-cell vehicles

— Each cell produces less than one volt of electricity, so a large number are needed to provide enough power for a car

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