Riversimple is a UK-based start-up company that has designed a highly efficient hydrogen-powered electric car using a whole system design approach. It optimizes the entire system of designing, manufacturing, and providing vehicles to customers in a more financially and environmentally sustainable manner. It was conceived to provide a personal mobility solution encompassing technology solution and full-service provision, with the purpose of systematically pursuing the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport.
Based on a sale-of-service business model, Riversimple will retain ownership of the vehicle throughout its life. Customers will pay a fixed monthly rental and variable per-mile charge (Riversimple will pay for fuel and maintenance). Where the traditional car ‘ownership’ model rewards obsolescence and high running costs, the sale of service model rewards longevity, resource minimization, and ‘it makes efficiency profitable’.
The Riversimple Rasa
Riversimple has an innovative governance structure that gives investors, employees, customers, suppliers, neighbors, and the environment a shared voice in the business, but equity remains with the investors. This structure assists in enhancing responsible decision-making and improved interaction between stakeholders to create environmental, social, and economic value while ensuring that financial interests are met.
The breakthrough in the motor industry, according to Riversimple’s visionary founder, Hugo Spowers, will come in the way a car is put together, the business model, and the delivery system. For car sector innovation, the barriers are not really technological, but people, business, and politics. Furthermore, the innovation is not in the individual components but comes out of the synergy between the elements of the car (carbon fiber, fuel cells, ultra-capacitors, and 4 electric motors).
Find more about Riversimple’s innovation here.
See a review in 2017 by the BBC’s Topgear here.
This case study was featured with the kind permission of Mr. Hugo Spowers, Chief Engineer and Founder of Riversimple.
