Interview Hugo Spowers, Riversimple 2/4
requires much higher performance than
fuel cells are currently able to give.
There is an interesting personal story
behind this unique company. Since he
was a boy, Spowers has been interested in
ecosystems and the natural world, but in
his early career the attraction of fast cars,
and the engineering required to make
them, were a stronger draw on a young
man. He graduated in Engineering from
Oxford and entered the world of motor
sport, but he found that "the rules governing motor racing developed to prevent any real innovation".
He decided to leave motor racing not
knowing what to do, "except it would
be nothing to do with cars." However he
went on to study for an MBA where he
was drawn into looking at a commercial
feasibility study of bringing compositebodied fuel-cell cars to market. "I already
knew that the barriers were not technical; it's people, politics and inertia."
Spowers now had the opportunity to
use his expertise in race car technology to apply to sustainability, which
he describes as "the defining issue of
our time" and a "very exciting era". He
has thought carefully about the evolution of the car as sustainability starts to
drive policy, and concluded that there is
a bright future for hydrogen, using fuel
cells to generate the electricity.
He assumed at first that you cannot
implement this approach without the
support of the car industry, "but you
can't do it with them; because it would
be commercial suicide for them." This
