The Riversimple Urban Car is a conceptual
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
fuel cell vehicle
A fuel cell vehicle (FCV) or fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) is an electric vehicle that uses a fuel cell, sometimes in combination with a small battery or supercapacitor, to power its onboard electric motor. Fuel cells in vehicles generate elec ...
that was proposed by
Hugo Spowers
Hugo Ronald Alan Spowers (born 1960) is a British entrepreneur-engineer who co-ordinated the development of the Morgan LIFEcar sports car project that was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2008, and the Riversimple Urban Car.
Spowers ...
' company,
Riversimple
Riversimple is a United Kingdom-based car manufacturer of hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). It is based in Llandrindod Wells, a town in Wales, where there is a research & development centre and the company's offices. Riversim ...
, in 2009. Their latest model, the
Rasa, was unveiled on 17 February 2016.
A working prototype vehicle was unveiled at the
Somerset House
Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("O ...
in London on 16 June 2009, and , with production initially planned to begin by 2013.
The plan has been subsequently superseded with the intention to develop a production vehicle of a similar format but with a new design in 2018–19.
Design
The Riversimple Urban Car was designed and developed in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
by teams at
Cranfield
Cranfield is a village and civil parish in the west of Bedfordshire, England, situated between Bedford and Milton Keynes. It had a population of 4,909 in 2001. increasing to 5,369 at the 2011 Census. The parish is in Central Bedfordshire uni ...
and
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
Universities. It was backed by Sebastian Piech, the great-grandson of
Ferdinand Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche AG. He is best known for creating the first gasoline–electric hybrid vehicle (Lohner–Porsche), the Volkswag ...
.
The Urban Car is a two-passenger vehicle about the size of a
Smart
Smart or SMART may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Smart'' (Hey! Say! JUMP album), 2014
* Smart (Hotels.com), former mascot of Hotels.com
* ''Smart'' (Sleeper album), 1995 debut album by Sleeper
* ''SMart'', a children's television ser ...
. It weighs , and the prototype was constructed of a
Carbon fiber
Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...
composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
body.
The car can reach speeds of and travel for on of
hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
before refueling.
2010 calculations showed it could achieve the equivalent of up to 300
mpg in hydrogen,
and a
life cycle assessment
Life cycle assessment or LCA (also known as life cycle analysis) is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of ...
carbon emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and larg ...
of less than 30g CO
2/km.
Operation
The Urban Car is powered by a
fuel cell
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most batteries in requ ...
from
Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies
Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies is a manufacturer of hydrogen Fuel cell, fuel cells based in Singapore. Founded in 2003, the company manufactures micro-size to multi-kilowatt scale proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Additionally, it provides hydr ...
that converts hydrogen into electricity. This power supply functions like a
battery
Battery most often refers to:
* Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power
* Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact
Battery may also refer to:
Energy source
*Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...
, uses no moving parts, and emits only pure water. There are two novel principles involved with this project: decoupling of acceleration from cruising, and mass decompounding.
''
Decoupling acceleration and cruise'' means that the fuel cell will only need to be large enough to supply the power needed for maintaining a constant speed, which is about 20% of the power needed for acceleration. Most of the car's braking is done by
electric motor
An electric motor is an Electric machine, electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a Electromagneti ...
s on each wheel. These motors capture the energy of the car in motion, and store it as electricity in a bank of
electric double-layer capacitor
A supercapacitor (SC), also called an ultracapacitor, is a high-capacity capacitor, with a capacitance value much higher than other capacitors but with lower voltage limits. It bridges the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable b ...
s (ultra-capacitors). This electricity is used to provide 75% of the power used in acceleration. Because of this, the Urban Car can be powered by a 6 kW fuel cell, which is significantly smaller than the
Honda FCX Clarity
The Honda Clarity is a nameplate used by Honda on alternative fuel vehicles. It was initially used only on hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles such as the 2008 Honda FCX Clarity, but in 2017 the nameplate was expanded to include the battery-elec ...
's 100 kW fuel cell. This requires less hydrogen to be stored on board, and results in an overall lighter vehicle.
''Mass decompounding'' involves designing the car as a complete system, as opposed to redesigning a car originally conceived as being powered by an
internal combustion engine
An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...
into a fuel cell vehicle. The combination of a small fuel cell, along with elimination of the unnecessary
gearbox
Propulsion transmission is the mode of transmitting and controlling propulsion power of a machine. The term ''transmission'' properly refers to the whole drivetrain, including clutch, gearbox, prop shaft (for rear-wheel drive vehicles), differe ...
,
drive shaft
A drive shaft, driveshaft, driving shaft, tailshaft (Australian English), propeller shaft (prop shaft), or Cardan shaft (after Girolamo Cardano) is a component for transmitting mechanical power (physics), power and torque and rotation, usually ...
s, power-assist systems, and associated components, results in a very lightweight vehicle.
Retail and licensing
, Riversimple planned to
lease
A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...
the cars over 15 years instead of selling them, with fueling included in the leasing cost. This was intended to increase the life of the vehicles, and reduce materials usage.
The cost of the lease was expected to be about £200 (US$330) per month.
[
, the open source design for the Riversimple Urban Car was planned to be stored on the 40 Fires ]wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
site online. The wiki project is called ''The Hyrban''.
At that time, Riversimple planned to lease the design to any small manufacturer for free, modify it as desired, and build their own version of the vehicle.
The CAD models for the Riversimple Hyrban technology demonstrator have been released under a Creative Commons license, attribution 3.0.
["The 40 Fires Foundation takes an open source approach to developing energy-efficient technology"]
See also
* Hydrogen economy
The hydrogen economy is using hydrogen to decarbonize economic sectors which are hard to electrify, essentially, the "hard-to-abate" sectors such as cement, steel, long-haul transport etc. In order to phase out fossil fuels and limit climate ch ...
* Morgan LIFEcar
The Morgan LIFEcar (''LI''ghtweight ''F''uel ''E''fficient ''Car'') was originally a fuel cell-powered electric vehicle project undertaken by Morgan Motor Company and startup company Riversimple. The goal of LIFEcar was a sports car that would b ...
* List of fuel cell vehicles
A fuel cell vehicle is a vehicle that uses a fuel cell to power an electric drive system. There are also hybrid vehicles meaning that they are fitted with a fuel cell and a battery or a fuel cell and an ultracapacitor. For HICEV see List of hy ...
References
External links
*
*
* {{youTube, IHSOgw3Ecw0, Urban Car's debut
Hydrogen cars
Fuel cell vehicles
Concept cars
Open hardware vehicles