Open-source hydrogen car takes to the road

Designs for the Riversimple urban car, capable of a 50mph top speed and a 240 mile range, will be freely available online in a bid to help grow the hydrogen market

Adam Vaughan, guardian.co.uk 16 Jun 09;

A new hydrogen-powered car, whose designs will be "open source" and posted for free use on the web, was unveiled today in London. The company behind the Riversimple urban car claim the new model proves hydrogen automotive technology is ready for roll-out now rather than in 10 years' time.

The open-source approach means entrepreneurs around the world could download the designs and manufacture the two-seater prototype locally for free.

The car, which drove in to the launch event, is capable of a 50mph top speed, 0-30mph acceleration in 5.5 seconds, and has a 240 mile range. The car's backers say it has greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2, less than a third of the latest hybrid petrol cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.

The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen in a modest 6kW fuel cell, and – in the case of this prototype – uses hydrogen converted from natural gas. Hydrogen can also be created from water using electrolysis and potentially even from biofuels.

The open-source decision was made to speed the car's commercialisation, with the company hoping entrepreneurs globally will adapt it to local conditions. Hugo Spowers, a motorsport engineer and the founder of Riversimple, said: "We want competitors, even if they're in the UK. We believe that open source is commercially the best thing for us to do, as it will help grow the market for hydrogen technology, from parts to repairs and the refuelling infrastructure."

Sebastian Piëch, the finanical backer for Riversimple, added: "Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology, the challenge is to begin the development of a fuelling infrastructure to accompany it."

The car, which cost nearly £500,000 to develop in partnership with Oxford University and Cranfield University, is expected to cost £200 a month to lease when it is launched as a production vehicle. The date for UK availability is yet to be announced, but Riversimple is in talks with UK cities including Oxford and Worcester for pilots.

Hydrogen cars have so far enjoyed little real-world success, due in part to a lack of charging infrastructure, cost and – more recently – a political swing towards electric cars.

Gordon Brown has publicly backed electric cars as a way to reduce UK carbon emissions, and in April the government announced plans to offer £5,000 grants towards anyone buying an electric car in 2011.

In the US, the Obama administration recently cut research budgets for hydrogen vehicles. Steven Chu, the US energy secretary, last month said: "We asked ourselves: 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no'."

Spowers disputed the notion that widespread hydrogen technology was a long way off. "I agree the passion is swinging away from hydrogen, but the reason is people are sceptical of the near-term possibilities of hydrogen vehicles – people are still clear that hydrogen is the end-game."

The Riversimple urban car, he said, proved the technology was available now.

The ultimate green car – but where do you fill it up?
The hydrogen-run vehicle unveiled yesterday promises a pollution-free future. But there is a bumpy road ahead
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 17 Jun 09;

It's silent, it's pollution free, it's nippy, and it'll get you round town for £2,500 a year, fuel and maintenance included. So, is it the car of the future? Maybe.

The developers of the hydrogen-powered Riversimple Urban Car certainly think it is, and when this new British contribution to green motoring was unveiled in London yesterday they did not spare the superlatives. The lightweight two-seater, which has a hydrogen fuel cell powering four electric motors, will cut travelling costs and do more to save the planet, they said, than any other car on the road.

That's if it gets there. What was unveiled yesterday on the terrace of Somerset House overlooking the Thames was a demonstration model and before the Riversimple can come off the production line and take its place in the traffic, many obstacles have to be crossed.

The biggest one is the hydrogen, which goes into the fuel cell in liquid form, at a very low temperature. There is no hydrogen refuelling infrastructure in Britain, or anywhere else for that matter, and at present no-one is proposing to build one, especially seeing the billions of pounds it would cost.

The answer to this from the engineer behind the Riversimple, Hugo Spowers, is to keep it local. Mr Spowers wants to go into partnership with a British city – he has Oxford in mind, among others – in which 50 vehicles would be based and leased to customers. As the car is intended to be a city runabout, rather than for long journeys, there would only need to be a single refuelling point in each urban centre, he says. If more cities took up the idea, Mr Spowers predicts a national hydrogen refuelling network could come into existence of its own accord.

But before he can get to that stage he has to raise another £20m of investment, of which "a proportion", he said yesterday, had been secured. The Riversimple publicity made much of the backing of Sebastian Piech, a member of the Piech motoring dynasty involved in running Porsche and Volkswagen, but Mr Spowers made it clear that Mr Piech was investing privately and not on behalf of any major German car company.

The advantages of the Riversimple, assuming it lives up to everything claimed by the makers, are considerable. It can reach a top speed of 50mph, which is comparable to that of the electric G-Wiz, but with a carbon fibre body and a much lighter fuel cell than in other hydrogen vehicles it is claimed to have a range on one fuel charge of 240 miles – five times the distance the G-Wiz can travel before recharging.

Above all, with a hydrogen fuel cell no carbon dioxide is emitted from the exhaust to add to the greenhouse gases causing global warming, which would be a principal reason for many people to buy the car. But Mr Spowers did admit that the emissions were in fact 30grams of CO2 per kilometre travelled, reflecting the amount of CO2 released in the industrial process needed to make the hydrogen. But even this, he said, was "a quarter of the lowest emissions of any car in the market today", and there was a prospect of "green" hydrogen in the future, made with renewable energy, when the CO2 would shrink even lower.

Hydrogen-powered car makes debut
Peter Woodman, Press Association The Independent 16 Jun 09;

A new lightweight hydrogen-powered car, capable of speeds up to 50mph, was shown off in London today.

Able to travel 240 miles without refuelling, and weighing just 772lb (350kg), the two-seater Riversimple Urban Car could be put into production as soon as 2013.

Before that the project leaders plan to raise funds to build 10 prototypes and try out vehicles in UK cities.

Supported by the great-grandson of car pioneer Ferdinand Porsche, the Riversimple car does the petrol equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon.

The design of the car will be placed online so that production versions can be developed to suit local requirements in urban areas.

The cars will be leased to users rather than sold, with owners getting a maintenance, support and fuel package. The vehicles are expected to have a life span of around 20 years.

The car has four electric motors attached to each wheel and these double as brakes and generate electricity which is stored in a bank of ultracapacitors.

The car is powered by a fuel cell of just six kilowatts compared with the 100kW in some hydrogen prototypes.

The car has been developed over the last three years in a co-operative research programme involving the River Simple development team founded by engineer Hugo Spowers and Oxford University, Cranfield University in Bedfordshire and Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies.

The research has been financed through initial support from industrial gas company BOC, Government grants and the private support of the Piech family including Sebastian Piech, a great-grandson of Ferdinand Porsche.

Mr Piech said: "The Riversimple Urban Car represents a major step towards practical 21st century personal transport and towards the fulfilment of my great-grandfather's ambitions for accessible personal transport, but this time combining his other passions: light weight and high efficiency.

"Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology the challenge is to begin the development of a fuelling infrastructure to accompany it, to encourage the adoption of the sale of mobility service and encourage broad participation in the open source design to make the already practical technology into a broadly adaptable customer proposition."