Riversimple - Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car

The Ground-breaking Riversimple

This little gem is an engineering  masterpiece, currently in pre-production testing in the UK midlands, Riversimple's team of highly qualified designers started from the ground up to re-think what is possible for the motor car.


The 2 seater features extensive use of carbon-fibre to keep weight down and structural strength high, a tiny  6kw Hydrogen fuel cell powers the vehicle at cruising speeds (approx 50mph max), whilst brisk acceleration is provided by ultra-capacitors charged from the highly efficient regenerative braking system, which can recover up to an astonishing 50% of the braking energy!


Riversimple realised that most energy is used to accelerate a vehicle up to it's cruising speed, and so have designed this car to use Ultra-capacitors (capable of  rapid storage and release of large amounts of energy for short periods), to provide shorts bursts of high energy to propel the car to its cruising speed, wherein the fuel cell takes over, needing to provide a mere 20% of the energy required for acceleration, this keeps the fuel cell small and light. In turn all the related systems can be made smaller & lighter (for example: power steering isn't necessary, saving weight of the power steering system) The design team refer to this principle as 'mass de-compounding' 


The car can accelerate from 0-30mph in 5.5 secs, has a top speed around 50mph and a range of approximately 240miles, with energy consumption equivalent to 300 mpg. Riversimple say they want to get away from selling people cars and will instead lease you a car for around £200 per month. The firm will produce 50 - 60 prototypes for evaluation in 2012.