The Rasa
Riversimple’s hydrogen-powered Rasa car will hit the market in 2022, but the company is going to start a trial run ahead of the due date. The two-seater vehicle will be leased out to the public in rounds beginning spring 2020. The 20-car trial will be based out of Monmouthshire, Wales. Riversimple has invested in a hydrogen filling station there, in Abergavenny.
The participants have all signed up already. Each person will get to lease the car for a short while before passing it on to another person. Overall, 280 retail customers, five public sector operators, and two car-sharing companies will get the chance to test out a Rasa. From the retail customer group, each person gets to lease a Rasa for only one month.
The More The Merrier
Hugo Spowers, Riversimple’s founder, wants as many people as possible to get a feel for the vehicle. Part of the project involves collecting data on customer usage styles. Each car has 20GB of bandwidth to gather information on how the customers like to use the vehicle. The company will then use the data for improvements and planning infrastructure.
The retail customers will pay £370 (US$478) for the month in addition to 18 pence (US$0.23) per mile. That outlay covers fuel, maintenance, and repairs. That will likely be the cost to lease a Rasa when it’s available to everyone in 2022. Spowers said the price is “benchmarked against the cost of ownership of a bottom-of-the-range diesel [Volkswagen] Golf.”
In regards to how he thinks the trial will turn out:
The trial is intended to refine the customer proposition and demonstrate the economics of filling station; we hope the one we’ve put in is the only one we’ll ever do. We want to work with Shell and so on to demonstrate the effectiveness from their point of view of this model of infrastructure.
We also want to showcase the project to other local councils and the government about how it works at a community level. We want to focus on this kind of expansion. Rather than blanket the UK, we will be targeting various areas.
Specifications
Since the Rasa is so lightweight, it is capable of an estimated 250 miles per gallon. Meaning, 1.5kg of hydrogen gives the driver a 300-mile range. A fuel cell combines hydrogen with oxygen, forming water and electricity, which powers four motors. Each wheel has its own motor. Combined, they create an output of about 443lb-ft of torque, which can accelerate the car from 0-60mph in 9.5sec and reach a top speed of 75mph. The whole drivetrain only has 18 moving parts.
Open-Sourcing
Riversimple plans to open-source its hydrogen technology because it will help drive the cost down. Spowers explained:
We are open sourcing our technology when we come to the market and would like to see many people as possible copy us to build volume in our supply chain to drive cost down.
Future Plans
Once the Rasa is in full production, Riversimple plans to launch a second vehicle – a last-mile delivery van. The powertrain will follow the same design and it will be made at the same factory, using the same infrastructure strategy as the Rasa.
Spowers said:
It’s a huge growth market if you look at any city and emissions from delivery vehicles. It will allow us to build volume in our plant and also for our infrastructure partners. We don’t want it to be our first vehicle, because we don’t want to define the brand with a utility vehicle.
Eventually, Riversimple hopes to have a system of filling stations strategically places around in cities where an alternative-gas vehicle will do well. The data-gathering from this trial will help with that.
