Welsh hydrogen car maker Riversimple scoops RAC motoring innovation award
News
3 Nov 2016
The company was awarded the RAC Simms Medal for an ‘Outstanding Contribution to Motoring Innovation’ for its Rasa hydrogen fuel cell car, which emits just water.
Riversimple becomes the ninth recipient of the Simms Medal, with previous winners including Williams Advanced Engineering for their Formula E racing cars and Ben Bowlby for the DeltaWing racing car. The Simms Medal is only awarded for ‘sufficiently innovative’ examples of automotive design and manufacturing, and is not an annual award.
Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers said: “The Riversimple team are delighted and honoured that their efforts to produce a car that is truly a breakthrough have been recognised. The Rasa has been designed specifically for hydrogen use with a completely different architecture to conventional and battery electric cars.
“We are confident that the Rasa can bring a momentous change in the way mobility is delivered and in the longer-term will have a global impact on the sustainability of personal transport.”
Royal Automobile Club’s Dewar Technical Committee chairman John Wood MBE said: “The Riversimple Rasa perfectly represents the ‘spirit of technical endeavour’ that the Simms Medal is awarded for. The car in itself is a real innovation, and really captured the imagination of the whole motoring community in a way that other hydrogen-powered vehicles hadn’t. As well as its technical originality, Riversimple also has radical ideas about the way people own and run its cars.”
The Rasa is the culmination of 15 years of research and development by a team that includes ex-F1 and aerospace engineers and the former FIAT design chief, and was launched in the spring to huge acclaim. It has a range of c.300 miles, refills in a few minutes and is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell as well as energy recaptured from braking.
The company is currently crowdfunding to help launch a beta-trial of 20 cars next year, with the two-seater expected on the market from late 2018 or early 2019.
In September, Riversimple was awarded two grants worth £350,000, for technology innovations that could lead to the creation of 7,000 jobs in the UK.
