Riversimple Urban Car promises to be the first fuel cell vehicle available for everyone

Have this date on your agenda: June 16. This is when a major breakthrough in human personal mobility aims to take place. Still refered to as "Riversimple Urban Car" (we'll call it RUC), the vehicle that will be presented in the United Kingdom next Tueday (a week from now) promises to be available to anyone willing to have a fuel cell car. For a lot of reasons.



The first one is the fact it will be a two-seater built mostly of composite materials, what will make it extremely light (about 350 kg). The second one it that the car is not intended to be sold, but to be leased, what would save natural resources, once these cars are aimed to be used for a long time. The third one is that it will not be expensive, once it uses a small fuel cell.

RUC will be powered by a 6 kW fuel cell, regenerative brakes and ultracapacitors. The car will be able to reach a top speed of 80 km/h, will be able to go from 0 to 56 km/h in 5.5 s, will have a 320 km range (if not longer) and an estimated fuel economy equivalent to 106.2 km/l of petrol. But using hydrogen and producing water as a by-product.

Besides all these ideas, the car will also be developed as an open source vehicle, like some softwares such as Linux. According to Riversimple, the company behind the car, this will help it spread to many parts of the globe without the structure a regular carmaker would need. Let's wait for more information on June 16.

Source: Riversimple via Autocar