Podcast: Changing the Way We Think About Cars- Forever

Copyright Philippa Roberts 2012 Riversimple's car will be a whole lot more efficient than this

A discussion with Hugo Spowers from Riversimple about the hydrogen fuel-cell powered car of the future.  But you can't buy it!


Start: Who, or what are Riversimple?
5min: What is a hydrogen fuel cell and how does a hydrogen fuel cell car work?
9min: Mass decompounding explained
10min: The car company that doesn't sell cars
12min: Car materials - carbon fibre versus steel
15min: Business risks
17 min: End of life vehicles (ELV) - disassembly and recycling cars
19min: Open source design
23min: Company structure and innovative governance

Futuristic car, futuristic company

Had a great morning interviewing one of the founders of Riversimple.  It's the most inspirational company and one that caught my interest a few years ago because of its open source car design.

The company itself aspires to change personal transport, and so has created a hydrogen fuel cell car; no battery, no combustion engine.  Amazing what you can do when you start with a blank page and a problem - i.e. how to make transport sustainable.  When you compare this with the normal approach of  tweaking what you already have, you can understand why both their proposition and their business model is so exciting and, I think, demonstrates so well what I am talking about when I speak about collaborative capitalism.

More to follow.  I'll edit the podcast this week so you can hear all about it for yourselves!