Pay-as-you-go hydrogen car edges closer to production

Britain's most radical automotive company is edging ever closer to full-scale production of a hydrogen car with a 300-mile range.

Pay-as-you-go hydrogen car

Riversimple aims to transform the way we use our cars by replacing outright ownership of diesel and petrol cars with hydrogen-powered vehicles you lease like a mobile phone. Customers will typically take a car for 1 - 3 years and pay a monthly direct debit which covers all costs, including insurance and fuel. At the end of the contract, the car is returned to Riversimple where it is refurbished and upgraded for the next customer. It's a business model that aims to redefine personal transport by making cutting-edge green technology affordable - and one that you can be part of.

Ahead of a one-year, 20-car test in Monmouthshire, starting later this year, for as little as £50, aspiring dragons can invest in the business. See riversimple.sharein.com for further details.

Those who back the venture will be in good company. At an early stage, Riversimple was invested in by Sebastian Piech, a great-grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who in 1898 worked on the Lohner Electric Chaise – one of the world’s earliest electric cars.

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Riversimple Rasa

Tabula Rasa means ‘clean slate’ in Latin. It’s an apt name for the new Riversimple car, a vehicle that redefines personal transport in our age of increasing population and diminishing natural resources. Every aspect of the Rasa has been created for simplicity, efficiency, lightness, strength, affordability, safety and sustainability.

In some respects, the Rasa can be likened to the Citroen 2CV, the iconic workhorse of post-war France. The two cars share a purpose of design, top speed of 60 mph and a weight of around 580 kg, but the Rasa is very much a car for today. Its chassis is a monocoque made from very stiff carbon fibre composites and yet weighs less than 40kg.

Weight distribution is balanced thanks to one electric motors in each wheel. The motors double up as brakes that can recover 50% of kinetic energy when applied.

The production prototype should do the equivalent of 250 mpg with a range of 300 miles. Emissions are zero at tailpipe and around 40 gCO2/km if the hydrogen comes from natural gas.

Rather than buying the hydrogen car outright or having to set up a hire purchase agreement, a simple pricing structure enables customers to pay a single monthly fee that covers everything – the car, the maintenance, the insurance, the fuel. The rationale is that customers have all the pleasure but none of the hassle of ownership. From the manufacturer's perspective, it pays to make a car that lasts as long, and runs as well, as possible.

More at riversimple.com

How does a hydrogen car work?

Hydrogen can be used as a fuel for electric cars thereby doing away with the need for a battery – the car does not have an engine in the conventional sense as it uses instead a fuel cell stack, a device that uses an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity to power a motor. These so-called fuel cell vehicles can travel longer distances than electric vehicles that need to be re-charged directly from a mains supply.

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