While automakers are fixated on developing the next generation of electric cars, one British firm has other ideas.
Riversimple is hoping that its hydrogen-powered two-seater car, which has a futuristic design crossed with retro traits, might be able to offer a viable alternative to electric vehicles.
The Wales-based company has created a car called Rasa. It says it runs on 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen and can go 300 miles. The vehicle’s engineering is very different to other cars on the market. For example, it has a motor on each wheel.
It is powered by reverse electrolysis. Hydrogen and oxygen are combined to create electricity and water is a by-product that drips out of the exhaust.
“All the major auto manufacturers are building hydrogen cars but they are trying to retrofit the technology into the sort of cars they make. And they’re all, effectively, built the same way as cars have … been for the last hundred years. The petrol engine taken out and a fuel cell put in place. We’ve started from a clean sheet of paper,” Hugo Spowers, founder of Riversimple, told CNBC in an interview aired Friday.