Riversimple

Idea

Introduction

Riversimple aims to offer customers a truly affordable, hassle free, fun-to-drive eco car, delivered as a complete and cost-transparent subscription service.

Our entry vehicle, the Rasa, is a zero emission electric car, powered by hydrogen rather than batteries. Our first production run is well underway with Rasas destined for a 12 month trial with the public.

We plan to follow the Rasa promptly with a light commercial van, and a 5 seat family vehicle as the network of filling stations matures.

Rather than selling our vehicles, Riversimple will provide them as a service, with a single monthly fee which covers the car, the maintenance, insurance and all fuel.

We successfully raised £2M+ in 2 previous crowd rounds, and are partnering with Seedrs again to build our movement and bring our brand of sustainable, clean mobility to market.

This is an opportunity to have a stake in a car manufacturer designed from a clean slate to be sustainable – financially, socially AND environmentally.

Intended impact

Riversimple started with a goal ‘to pursue, systematically, the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport’ and we have never wavered from this.

Air quality is acknowledged to be a massive and urgent challenge, and we believe the Rasa is best in class. It emits nothing but pure water vapour, no NOx and is designed, with its low weight, skinny tyres and highly regenerative braking, to minimise the particulates from tyres and brakes.

As we move away from petrol and diesel cars, there is a large swath of the population for whom battery electric cars will never be practical - for range and recharging reasons.

We are now fundraising to finish a 20 car production run, to carry out a trial of our service and to kick off volume production engineering to enable us to reach commercialisation.

Substantial accomplishments to date

The latest Rasa is the culmination of 18 years’ development.

Engineering innovations continue - we’ve recently completed 4 technology grant projects: on carbon-braiding techniques; incorporating flax into carbon fibre; hydrogen pressure test rigs and an exploration of a circular economy relationship with a tyre supplier.

Both Innovate UK and Business Wales have filmed Riversimple as a success story.

Through 2 successful crowd rounds, we have built an investor base of over 950 shareholders from 21 countries.
3000+ people have expressed a desire to be customers, some from as far away as NZ and Japan.

Collaborations have been sought from India, Dubai, Sweden and China - Riversimple accompanied the Prime Minister on her trade delegation to China in January 2018.

Back in the UK, we have installed a hydrogen refueller in Abergavenny for the Clean Mobility Trial and we have a shortlist of households, car-sharing schemes and organisations that will be trialling the Riversimple Rasas, including Monmouthshire County Council, Welsh Water and the NHS.

As a pioneer in the circular economy, Riversimple has been named as an Emerging Innovator by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and one of the world’s top 100 disruptive companies by Disrupt100. Riversimple MD Hugo Spowers was invited to addressed the European Investment and Central Banks’ Annual conference in Luxembourg.

During our Clean Mobility Trial we aim to achieve some 250,000 miles of clean mobility.

Monetisation strategy

Through a subscription service, Riversimple aims to generate a regular, resilient income from a steady customer base, over the long term, through dividend payments.

As a customer, you take a car for 1-3 years and pay a monthly fee that covers everything: insurance, maintenance, recovery, tax, and fuel even. When the subscription ends, customers can choose to renew it or return the car, and we’ll supply it to a 2nd customer, 3rd, 4th and so on.

Our model gives us access to both new and 2nd-hand customers. Opening up a significant opportunity for the Rasa, which we will market initially as a local, commuter car around existing hydrogen filling stations.

As our income comes from the cumulative number of vehicles in service rather than the number ‘sold’ annually, we believe that our revenue would be much more resilient in economic downturns. We also ‘break even’ at much lower numbers than the current industry because the tooling cost for carbon fibre is substantially lower than for steel-bodied cars.

Use of proceeds

Through 2 successful crowd rounds in 2017 and 2018 we have raised over £2M. Money raised has funded important software and hardware developments and supported vehicle builds. We have also installed a hydrogen filling station in the centre of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

Proceeds from this crowd raise will be used to support the 20 car production run and to forge ahead with the operations and marketing of The Clean Mobility Trial. We have a shortlist of customers waiting to participate in this trial, both households and organisations.

The next step will be to expand the engineering team and kick off volume production engineering to enable us to reach commercialisation by our target of 2021.