Kawasaki Finally Listens To Customers And Makes The Hydrogen-Powered Robot Horse You’ve Been Clamoring For

Ugh, you know how the robotic horse market has been such garbage? I mean, sure, there are all kinds of robotic sex-horses you can get from your local family-owned erotic mechanical equipment dealer, but what if you just want all of the open-air convenience of (non-sexually) riding a horse without all of the messy, messy biology? And what if you want to add the inconvenience of hydrogen fueling into the equation? What then?

Up until quite recently, I’d have said, Sorry, friend, you’re out of luck. But not anymore! Finally, someone has listened to all of the consumers, and that someone is Kawasaki. Yesterday at the Osaka-Kansai Expo 2025, Kawasaki showed the world the Corleo, essentially a robotic horse that eats hydrogen instead of hay and the occasional apple, if they’ve been a good horse.

Corleo seems to be primarily intended for off-road use, sort of like the use case for an ATV or four-wheeler, only here it has legs and is controlled by motions and weight shifting of the rider’s body, in a manner similar to that of riding a horse or, if you can convince the upper half, a centaur.

Here, just watch this thing:

Now, there is some question as to whether or not this thing actually exists and works, or if this video is just all CGI, which it seems to be. All Kawasaki actually showed live at the Expo was a stationary example of the machine. All it did was change positions slowly, like a cat stretching, as you can see here:

It’s also maybe worth noting that Corleo doesn’t seem terribly equine, really, but rather seems more like a wolf, or perhaps even more feline. The name may even be suggesting something like this, since the logo for it divides the name into Cor/Leo:

So, maybe the “leo” is referencing a lion? And the “cor” is, um, for a … corvid? Because crows are smart? Maybe?

Here’s what Kawasaki says about this new concept machine:

Kawasaki’s revolutionary off-road personal mobility vehicle offers excellent all-terrain capability, powered by four robotic legs, together with the handling and stability of Kawasaki’s motorcycles. While preserving the joy of riding, the vehicle continually monitors the rider’s movements to achieve a reassuring sense of unity between human and machine. Scale mountains, breathe in the fresh air, and enjoy panoramic views. Let CORLEO unleash your “Impulse to Move” in the great outdoors.

Hm. Nothing there really says that it’s any more real than a lightly motorized model. It’s definitely a concept at this point, but a concept that Kawasaki has put a good bit of thought into, at least.

Up front, there is a 150cc engine – single-cylinder, I’m assuming – that runs on hydrogen, because many Japanese companies, like Toyota, seem quite fixated on hydrogen. I don’t really get why, at this point. Yes, it’s the most abundant element in the universe, but here on Earth, where we and such notable figures as Nathan Lane and author Mary Roach actually live, hydrogen is expensive to extract and difficult to store.

It’s also interesting that the hydrogen is being used to power a combustion engine, which in turn generates electricity for motors that drive the legs. Typically, in the context of a hydrogen-powered electric vehicle, a hydrogen fuel cell is used to create electricity, not a combustion engine.

The hooves are especially interesting, as they’re made of a combination of metal and rubber, with the rubber providing more grip on slicker surfaces:

These hooves are also less like feline animals, famous for their paws, and closer to horses, though the split hoof feels more like a deer or antelope or something?

The video also shows an interesting projection-based sort of heads-up display, in this case showing navigation arrows projected onto the ground. This would be useful for any sort of ATV, legged or wheeled or otherwise:

So what do we make of this thing? I don’t actually think it’s fully real yet, though I suspect it could be. I’m just not really sure who would prefer to ride around on a robot horse rather than an ATV. [Ed note: Bravestar and He-Man (but most frequently Fisto), that’s who – Pete] And a hydrogen robot horse? Isn’t the whole point of something like this that you can go anywhere? If you’re limited to hydrogen refueling, that “anywhere” quickly becomes “like, three places, and in America, basically just Southern California.”

This basic idea has been around a good while. Did you ever read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age? He describes robotic horses meant to be ridden, called chevalines, like this:

No effort was made to disguise it as a real animal. Much of the mechanical business in the legs was exposed so that you could see how the joints and pushrods worked, a little like staring at the wheels of an old steam locomotive. The body looked gaunt and skeletal. It was made of star-shaped connectors where five or six cigarette-size rods would come together, the rods and connectors forming into an irregular web that wrapped around into a geodesic space frame. The rods could change their length. Hackworth knew from seeing the same construction elsewhere that the web could change its size and shape to an amazing degree while providing whatever combination of stiffness and flexibility the controlling system needed at the moment. Inside the space frame Hackworth could see aluminum-plated spheres and ellipsoids, no doubt vacuum-filled, containing the mount’s machine-phase guts: basically some rod logic and an energy source.

And even earlier than that, we have an 1892 book called Frank Reade and His Steam Horse:

So this is all hardly a new idea. But I suppose it’s kind of fun to see, still.

Maybe these legged vehicles will actually find use for traversing terrain that’s simply too rough for wheels, and in those contexts, I think they make a lot of sense. Just maybe, you know, not hydrogen.

The One With The Horse On It: Cold Start

This Comparison Between EV Costs And Horse-And-Carriage Costs From 1900 Is Fascinating

How To Advertise Cars By Making Horses Look Like Jerks: Cold Start