A NO-FRILLS car – which ironically is worth about £200,000 – could save the planet and a struggling Scots city.
The Riversimple Rasa is thought to weigh less than the battery in a Tesla.
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The Riversimple Rasa hydrogen car designed by Hugo Spowers
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Hugo hopes his motor will be the car of the future
It’s an electric motor that’s powered by hydrogen rather than a battery, which is made up of components that aren’t good for the environment.
It can travel 300 miles on a £17 tank and all it pumps out are little droplets of water and steam.
The vehicle doesn’t come with the usual added extras, like heated seats and bluetooth, but creator Hugh Spowers is hoping that’s a selling point.
He’s eyeing up Aberdeen as a possible location for his first ever plant that could create more than 5,000 vehicles a year and create more than 800 jobs.
It could herald a fresh start and a new direction for the Granite City as its lifeblood industry of oil looks to be running dry.
Hugo said: “Aberdeen clearly wants to transition its economy to a renewable world and is very proactive about it. It’s got all the resources and skills. It’s a great base to start from.
“We don’t want to be pushing on closed doors and trying to convince people who are naysayers and spectics.
“If somebody is interested it makes it so much easier to make progress, especially when you’re a small company.”
The Rasa is made from carbon fiber rather than steel and has a top speed of just 60mph but can hit it in less than ten seconds.
It’s designed to be light and fast and doesn’t have things like power steering – or back seats – that drivers now take for granted.
Former race car designer Hugo’s vision means that the handmade motors will never be available for sale.
They will only ever be offered through fixed term service contracts, which cover everything including road tax, insurance and fuel.
It’s thought the price will be about £500 a month, the same it would cost you to have a bottom of the market diesel Golf on the road.
Hugo said: “We have a completely different equation when designing our cars.
“They would never be competitive if we sell them because they’re far too expensive to sell.
“If you sell cars you make more money by selling more cars. You are rewarded for maximizing resource consumption.
“I don’t see how we can ever have a sustainable industrial planet based on rewarding industry for the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. It’s never going to work.”
Hugo took me for a spin in one of the Rasa’s, which has gull-wing doors like the Delorean from 80s flick Back to the Future.
The lightweight motor definitely feels like something out of a movie because it’s deceptively fast. It’s so zippy I thought we were going well above the 60mph it can hit.
Hugo said: “We want it to be fun to drive. No one wants to feel like they’re behind the wheel of an oil tanker.
“It’s got everything you need and nothing you don’t. We could make bigger, faster cars but they’ll be more expensive.”
The car that Hugo hopes to build in Aberdeen will be a bit higher than the Rasa so they’re more accessible.
He’s drawn to the city because of its bid to become a green freeport which would offer tax breaks and lower business rates to stimulate investment. If successful the move could be worth £8.5billion for the local economy.
Hugo, who was invited north by the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said: “It seems like a natural fit.
“Scotland generally has a positive and proactive strategy for hydrogen. Aberdeen sees itself as the European capital of that.
“The plans they have are really ambitious and they chime completely with what we’re doing.”
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The car has no lux extras – but only emits steam
