Riversimple revealing engineering prototype of its 1st H2 fuel cell road car on Wednesday
16 February 2016
Riversimple (earlier post) will reveal the engineering prototype of its first hydrogen-powered road on Wednesday, 17 February. Riversimple is a consortium member of SWARM (Demonstration of Small 4-wheel fuel cell passenger vehicle Applications in Regional and Municipal transport).
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| Teaser shot. Click to enlarge. |
The car is very light, with a target weight of 520 kg. It embodies various key features:
- Four electric motors, one in each wheel
- Motors as brakes—recovering more than 50% of kinetic energy when braking
- Super-capacitors to store this energy and provide most of the power for acceleration
- A low-powered hydrogen fuel cell (8.5 kW)
- A body made of lightweight composites
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Riversimple’s Mk2 production prototype, with third-generation powertrain developed throughout the year in a Mk1 vehicle, performed its initial trials in late October 2015.
SWARM has received FCH-JU (Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking) research funding from the European Union.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative under grant agreement N° 303485.
Amazing all weather (4WD) short distance vehicle (to go to work) cleanly and effectively without pushing too much weight.
Super caps & smaller FC combo is a good idea.
A four passenger version should not be too complicated to design and build?
Posted by: HarveyD | 16 February 2016 at 09:51 AM
Very aesthetic body concept with lots of goodies.
These designer styled products are always inspiring.
Enthusiasts migrate towards imaginative design.
Building such a platform that meets the safety regulatory and service requirements for production manufacture is necessary for power train testing and development.
There are very few offerings in this lightweight minimalist vehicle class.
I wonder if the chassis design team will consider the potential for making gliders available for other power sources that may include battery or various hybrid developments.Obviously various H2 F.C. parties would like access to such an engineered platform.
While any market would likely not be mainstream, costs would be expected to be high per unit (though mass production would be a game changer) there are many examples of custom platform vehicles gaining sufficient customers to be viable in the market.
I think there is historically unmet global interest in this class of glider platform.
Posted by: Arnold | 16 February 2016 at 02:18 PM