Riversimple will offer the car to motorists through its unique ‘sale of service’ model. For a fixed monthly fee and mileage allowance, similar in expenditure to leasing and running a new family-sized hatchback, the company will cover all repair, maintenance, insurance and fuel expenses. Customers will never actually buy the car and experience the burden of depreciation; they will simply exchange or return it at the end of the ownership period.
Led by Riversimple’s Founder, Hugo Spowers, the Rasa has been engineered by a highly-skilled team from some of the world’s most renowned carmakers, Formula 1 teams and aerospace engineering companies. It has been styled by Chris Reitz, one of Europe’s leading car designers. With a total kerb weight of just 580kg (nearly half of a small car), it features a carbon composite chassis and only 18 moving parts in the entire powertrain. Furthermore, Riversimple will adopt an open-source approach to its technology and componentry to encourage the proliferation of its technology and economies of scale within the sector.
A full report on the design of the Rasa will be in the March 2016 issue of Eureka.
