Hydrogen Car Unveiled

A new hydrogen car that weighs 772 pounds and can travel 186 miles on just 2.2 pounds of liquid hydrogen has been unveiled in London. The Riversimple Urban Car is powered by a cheap, 6-kilowatt fuel cell that combines hydrogen with oxygen from the atmosphere and produces only water as a byproduct. Riversimple’s founder and automotive engineer, Hugo Spowers, said that the company’s original, light design helps it overcome some of the drawbacks that have hampered the development of hydrogen cars, including the ability to store enough hydrogen to power a vehicle. He said that the hydrogen/oxygen reaction will power four electric motors, each attached to a wheel, and that energy will be stored in a series of ultracapacitors that can take on and release energy much more efficiently than conventional batteries. The Riversimple’s fuel cell is 1/16th the size of the fuel cell in Honda’s prototype FCX Clarity hydrogen car. The Riversimple vehicle, which has a top speed of 50 miles per hour and is roughly the size of a Smart car, will be available in limited quantities in 2011 and will be mass-produced in 2013, Spowers said.