Riversimple pulled the sheet off its ultra-lightweight fuel cell Urban Car today in London and said it delivers a 50-mph top speed, a 200-mile range and fuel economy equivalent to 300 mpg. The company claims it also emits a paltry 30 grams per kilometer of CO2. The car features a 6-kilowatt fuel cell, which is miniscule compared to the 100-kW unit in the Honda FCX Clarity, but the developers say that’s plenty for a vehicle that weighs just 770 pounds.
“This next generation hydrogen-electric car brings electric vehicles into a new stage where range, charge-time and cost are no longer commercial barriers,” said Taras Wankewycz of Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies. The company provided the fuel cell that powers the car.
Porsche scion Sebastian Piech is a partner in the firm. His family helped finance the project, which was been in the works for nine years and was developed with help from Oxford and Cranfield universities.
Many major automakers have relegated hydrogen cars to the back burner — Honda, BMW and Mazda are notable exceptions — and the Obama Administration wants to cut hydrogen vehicle R&D funding. But Spowers believes hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Wired News
The car was developed by Riversimple in collaboration with Oxford University, Cranfield University in Bedfordshire and Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, a Shanghai-based developer and manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cells and related products.
The research was supported by the British gas company BOC Group PLC and the Piech family, including Sebastian Piech, a great-grandson of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche.
The new car represents a big step for Horizon, which sells fuel cells used to power consumer products and has developed solid-state storage and refilling technology for hydrogen. The Press Association
When it goes into production from 2013, the cars will not be sold but will be leased, for about £200 a month, as part of a package including maintenance and fuel.
“You are not buying a product but a personal transport service,” Mr Piech said, adding that this would create an incentive for the cars to be kept on the road and used for as long as possible — a more environmentally sustainable model than conventional car manufacturing, where cars are bought, driven into the ground and junked.
“It’s a much more sustainable model,” John Constable, the chairman of Riversimple, said. The design and intellectual property rights for the car are also being offered free to anybody who wants to build one in an effort to accelerate uptake of the technology.
In fuel-efficiency terms, it can do the petrol equivalent of 300mpg (106 km/l) and emits only water. However, not everything about the car is entirely green. The hydrogen gas used to fuel the cars will be produced — at least initially — by processing natural gas. Times Online
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