Open-source hydrogen car takes to the road

UK Guardian
Adam Vaughan
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Designs for the Riversimple urban car, capable of a 50mph top speed and a 240 mile range, will be freely available online in a bid to help grow the hydrogen market.

A new hydrogen-powered car, whose designs will be “open source” and posted for free use on the web, was unveiled today in London. The company behind the Riversimple urban car claim the new model proves hydrogen automotive technology is ready for roll-out now rather than in 10 years’ time.

The open-source approach means entrepreneurs around the world could download the designs and manufacture the two-seater prototype locally for free.

The car, which drove in to the launch event, is capable of a 50mph top speed, 0-30mph acceleration in 5.5 seconds, and has a 240 mile range. The car’s backers say it has greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2, less than a third of the latest hybrid petrol cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.

The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen in a modest 6kW fuel cell, and – in the case of this prototype – uses hydrogen converted from natural gas. Hydrogen can also be created from water using electrolysis and potentially even from biofuels.

The open-source decision was made to speed the car’s commercialisation, with the company hoping entrepreneurs globally will adapt it to local conditions. Hugo Spowers, a motorsport engineer and the founder of Riversimple, said: “We want competitors, even if they’re in the UK. We believe that open source is commercially the best thing for us to do, as it will help grow the market for hydrogen technology, from parts to repairs and the refuelling infrastructure.”

Sebastian Piëch, the finanical backer for Riversimple, added: “Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology, the challenge is to begin the development of a fuelling infrastructure to accompany it.”

The car, which cost nearly £500,000 to develop in partnership with Oxford University and Cranfield University, is expected to cost £200 a month to lease when it is launched as a production vehicle. The date for UK availability is yet to be announced, but Riversimple is in talks with UK cities including Oxford and Worcester for pilots.

Hydrogen cars have so far enjoyed little real-world success, due in part to a lack of charging infrastructure, cost and – more recently – a political swing towards electric cars.

Gordon Brown has publicly backed electric cars as a way to reduce UK carbon emissions, and in April the government announced plans to offer £5,000 grants towards anyone buying an electric car in 2011.

In the US, the Obama administration recently cut research budgets for hydrogen vehicles. Steven Chu, the US energy secretary, last month said: “We asked ourselves: ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no’.”

Spowers disputed the notion that widespread hydrogen technology was a long way off. “I agree the passion is swinging away from hydrogen, but the reason is people are sceptical of the near-term possibilities of hydrogen vehicles – people are still clear that hydrogen is the end-game.”

The Riversimple urban car, he said, proved the technology was available now.

Run Your Car On Water!

With ever increasing gas prices I have recently been looking at depth into alternative fuel sources to power my car. All that we here of in the mainstream is bio-diesel – people running their vehicles on cooking fat and suchlike. This is fine if you own a diesel car, but not much use if you’re on gas, like I am.

After a little digging around I came up with a very interesting potential solution – running my car on water. This is not a new idea; the concept was around in the 1930’s but never seemed to take off. It’s seems highly probable to me that the idea was suppressed by the oil and motor companies, through fear of losing their monopoly on fuel and petrol engines. If this is not the case, then it seems very coincidental to me that now people are starting to do their own conversions, suddenly major automobile companies are accepting the technology and starting to use the concept in their own vehicles, notably Honda.

So how does it work? The technology uses a hydrogen fuel cell. The fuel cell separates hydrogen from water, and this is used to power the motor. At the moment it’s just being used as a supplemental fuel alongside gas or diesel, but theoretically a car can run solely on water! This is great for the environment as all that it exhausts is water – zero emissions.

Now obviously a fuel cell backed by millions of dollars of investment and designed and built by a major auto manufacturer will outperform a homemade cell, but thousands of people are making them at home and fitting them themselves – and with these low technology units people are reporting improvements of between 30% and 60% improvement in miles per gallon!

Another great fact about them is that they are inexpensive to build and pretty simple in design; any semi competent DIY advocate can build one, with most items needed being available at Lowes or Home Depot.

The principle behind the technology is simple – you separate the hydrogen in the water from the oxygen, discard the oxygen, and you’re left with a highly explosive gas. A basic cell consists of two stainless steel plates connected to a battery, one plate positive the other negative. When current is passed through the cell the oxygen and hydrogen in the water are pulled apart. The more plates you have the more gas is produced.

Type ‘hho’, browns gas, hydrogen cell or water car into Google and you’ll find a wealth of information on the subject, including actual fuel cell designs and plans, as well as readymade cells for purchase for home fitting.

It seems such a shame to me that this technology is readily available yet not being promoted by governments; a completely emission free, unlimited source of fuel, at very low cost. I feel that cost is the major stumbling block; low cost means low taxes and less profit – the money machine wins again!

I think eventually, especially as people are taking the matter into their own hands and the system is gaining more and more public interest, governments will come up with a reason why taxing us more for water will be a ‘benefit to society’ and the system will become mainstream.

Until such a time I think it’s up to every individual to make the most of the technology while it’s still free!