Here’s the latest patent drawings from Honda’s R&D office giving us more detail about the company’s upcoming hydrogen motorcycle.

In the designs the bike’s rear wheel electric motor is shown in detail, as is the single-sided swingarm.

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There is no indication on the physical size of the bike, but given the outline drawing’s proportions this doesn’t look like something small. At the very least, this hydrogen/electric motorcycle appears to be a 500cc sized equivalent bike or possibly larger. The outline of the bike bears more than a passing resemblance to a current Honda Grom, and at the moment that’s a 125cc – so this motorcycle could actually be a small hydrogen motorcycle from Honda. Imagine that.

That description of the drawings goes into some detail about Honda upping the structural strength of the bike’s swingarm. Previous designs have been found to be too weak to carry the usual forces of the motorcycle’s weight and chassis passing through the unit, plus the electric motor and internal braking system – this latest design concentrates on strengthening the cast parts which make up the external walls of the swingarm.

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All of which points to Honda getting serious about production concerns in the road-ready version of its first Hydrogen motorcycle. With Japan’s government working to a plan to have 40,000 fuel cell vehicles on Japan’s road by 2020 (and a 160-strong network of filling stations across the country by the same deadline) things are looking much more serious for this motorcycle – expect a pre-production version of this motorcycle to appear at the end of 2019 under the ‘concept’ banner.

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Tony Carter

Tony has been riding motorcycles for over 35 years and he's been a motorcycle writer for over 25 of those. He's ridden almost every motorcycle you can think of at most places around the world and he's partial to some racing, too. A Taurus, Tony doesn't believe in horoscopes (but then that's exactly what a Taurus would say!) but he does believe in Mandalorians and their right to earn a living.