Can personal transport and a healthy environment co-exist? Why do the auto industry seem more interested in profits than in life? What if we could build a car company on principles of stewardship? Riversimple was started more than 10 years ago with these and other questions. We are now at the point where we are optimistic of having our first hydrogen powered cars on the roads in the UK by the end of next year.
We started by re-thinking the car and realised this wasn’t enough - we need to re-think the auto industry. We then realised that this wasn’t enough. We need to re-think the whole company legal framework, something that has barely changed (in the UK) since 1855.
What we have now is a design for a car that will be the most aerodynamic and energy efficient commercial vehicle in the world. It will not be available for sale (since a sale of product model encourages obsolescence) but only for lease, on contracts from a few months to a few years. It has been designed by a team, led by the man who led the team designing the modern Fiat 500.
We also intend to make our technology available on-line, through the independent open source foundation we established called 40 Fires.
The really exciting thing is that stewardship is embedded into the DNA of the company. The board are obliged by law to serve the purpose, which is “to build and operate cars whilst systematically eliminating the environmental damage caused by personal transport.” What’s more the board are appointed by and report to, “custodians” who speak for different stakeholders - investors, customers, staff, suppliers, the community and the planet. Yes, we have appointed a spokesperson for Mother Earth, who has formal power within the organisation. As far as we know this is unique in the world.
We have raised and invested more than £10m so far. Currently we are finishing a beta version of our car, which should be ready for public viewing in February 2015. We then need to raise more funding, to start a trial in the UK in the second half of next year.
I have a couple of questions about that - in order to know more and understand the full picture-
about leasing the car instead of buying it , how much would that be , in order to compete with the mainstream car market . in other words how are you going to fit in the market ?
another thing do you consider introducing this to a car sharing program ?
I didn’t really get the “custodians” part that the board are appointed by and report to , can you explain more about that please
any way it seems like a well developed innovation and probably have tracks for further development , what about introducing a track for the hackathon in October in Matera
Hi Hazem, thanks for your questions about our project. We don’t know exactly the price of our vehicles yet - it will depend on multiple factors. But we aim to be competitive - so it shouldn’t cost more to rent our car (on say a three year contract) than it would to own a conventional vehicle. Having said that, when we first enter the market our costs are likely to be higher than they will be later on so we might need to charge a premium.
As for car sharing, we love car sharing but wouldn’t offer it ourselves. There are plenty of companies very good at this and we would hope to work in partnership with them. We think our car will be ideal for car share companies.
As for the custodians, this is quite complex (it took us years to figure it out) although fairly simple once you understand it. Usually the board (who run the company) are appointed by investors. This means they tend to prioritise the interests of shareholders, which tend to be short-term and the opposite of stewardship. We want our board to balance interests - people and planet, organisation and community, short-term and long-term - and so we want the board to be appointed by people who represent a diversity of interests: customers, suppliers, the community, investors, the planet… How we do this legally is probably not important for your purposes, although if you are interested I can certainly tell you more.
I am not planning to attend the hackathon but am intending to be in Matera from 23rd - 26th October.
I love the idea, open-source technology combined with eco-friendly combined with stewardship. It is exactly what the world needs.
Just wondering: what is the prediction you made on how many cars will be in use at one certain point? Also, are you already planning to go abroad with this project as well?
you ask a big question. Our vision is of less cars overall on the roads, but they are used more than current cars. There is huge and growing demand in China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere for cars and this is a massive environmental and social problem if they all look like conventional vehicles - polluting, heavy, expensive. As for our cars. we are not making grand plans at this stage - we are focused on finishing the vehicle, running a pilot and starting production, which will mean one factory building 5000 cars a year. Once we have done that successfully, we believe there is no limit to how far we can go. We imagine collaborating with entrepreneurs around the world with joint ventures and licenses and other forms of collaboration. We have had significant interest already from many countries - the trick is to keep our focus and prove the car and the business model work first before looking further afield.
Definitely. And yes, there is a role for midrange personal transport, though my money is squarely on the bicycle as the best tech for urban transport (and with humanity being ever more urbanized, most transport will be urban).
Hi Alberto, am catching up on my emails and responding to your reply to my post.
I am more of a bicycle man than a car man and am convinced that in the future we will have to de-emphasize car ownership and look at integrated transport more - car clubs, trams, etc. There are billions of people in emerging economies who are dreaming of cars. I hope that many of them can be persuaded that they don’t really need a car at all. But if they are going to have one, I would rather it be lightweight, very energy efficient and open source than one from VW or Ford.
And thanks for the link to the open source car. I had seen some attempts at this in the past but they always ran up against legal or technical or organisational obstacles. This looks like a significant step forward. I am convinced that this is an idea whose time has come.
