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 gov- erning motor racing developed to pre- vent 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 composite- bodied fuel-cell cars to market. “I already knew that the barriers were not techni- cal; it’s people, politics and inertia.” Spowers now had the opportunity to use his expertise in race car technol- ogy 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 evolu- tion 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
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