Riversimple fuel cell car: the first open-source roadware

On the surface of it, the Riversimple is another small electric car appearing amid a burgeoning market of small electric cars.

But it suggests some radical and important changes to the auto industry, many of them outside of the vehicle itself.

First, the product: It's a small two-seater, about the size and shape of Daimler's smart fortwo. It's moved by an electric motor on each wheel. These are powered by a small hydrogen fuel cell -- a tiny 6kW compared to the 100kW cell Honda uses in its Insight -- and a bank of ultracapacitors fed by regenerative braking.

Its mainly carbon composite framework keeps its weight down to a tiny 350kg, helping it to a top speed of around 80km/h. Its progenitors claim a range of up to 300-400 km on a single charge of its 1kg hydrogen tank, a fuel efficiency equivalent of around 1.0L/100km and CO2 emissions of 30g/km.

Now, with the basic hardware facts out of the way, we can get on to the things that make the Riversimple truly unique in the auto industry.

It hails from a non-profit business model -- a kind of automotive answer to the anti-proprietary, open-source thinking that made first Unix and more recently Linux the operating systems of choice for people who really know their computing. They're small, elegant and flexible. And because they're not made to be junked in favour of new-improved product, they're evolutionary, allowing them to transcend the obsolescence so inherent to profit-driven consumerism.

This is the other side of the thinking behind the carbon composite framework. There's an element of the aviation industry's airframe system here, too -- the grandpa's-axe thinking that gives aircraft a lifespan of several decades.

All of which allows the car's makers to get it to market very cheaply compared with competing product. The business model rejects outright purchase in favour of leasing, for which they're talking in sums of around £200 ($410) a month -- including the cost of hydrogen refuelling. That compares favourably indeed with Honda's FCX Clarity, which costs US$600 ($750) a month on a three year lease and the MINI E, which costs US$850 ($1060) a month on a one year lease.

Riversimple achieves its economies of scale by extending the lease period up to 20 years.

The man behind it, former motorsport engineer and racing driver Hugo Spowers, also proposed a production matrix built on small, local-level manufacturing facilities using open-source blueprints available free of charge on the web.

Whether the idea has legs remains to be seen. But 10 prototype vehicles are set to hit UK streets in 2010, and it has already attracted some heavyweight interest, most notably from Sebastian Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche.

But it has no historical reference points within the auto industry. But this is not a static, disposable product. And with so much up for grabs across every dimension of the industry, it could well find a market.

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