Riversimple is a United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-based transportation company focused on producing environmentally conscious automobiles.

Riversimple was founded by former motorsport engineer and racing driver Hugo Spowers

Hugo Spowers

Hugo Spowers is a British entrepreneur-engineer who co-ordinated the development of the Morgan LIFEcar sports car project that was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2008, and the Riversimple Urban Car....

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The Riversimple company designs energy-efficient automobiles, including the Morgan LIFEcar

Morgan LIFEcar

The Morgan LIFEcar is a fuel cell-powered electric vehicle project being undertaken by Morgan Motor Company and startup company Riversimple. The goal of LIFEcar is a sports car that will be environmentally responsible, and also deliver impressive performance...

 and the Riversimple Urban Car

Riversimple Urban Car

The Riversimple Urban Car is an open source hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that is to be built by Hugo Spowers' company, Riversimple. A working demonstrator vehicle was unveiled at the Somerset House in London on 16 June 2009, and production is planned to begin by 2013.-Design:The Riversimple Urban Car...

. Several elements are considered during each design, including hydrogen

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...

 fuel cell

Fuel cell

A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...

 power sources, lightweight carbon fibre composite material

Composite material

Composite materials, often shortened to composites or called composition materials, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or...

s, open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 development and design, leasing

Lease

A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...

instead of selling the cars, distributing manufacturing among many small companies, and broad corporate ownership.