A life less ordinary

Feature While many still view the quest for speed without consideration for the environment, it is refreshing to learn that a decrease in the carbon footprint is just as important to some car manufacturers these days.

The Lightweight Fuel Efficient Car, or the LIFEcar, is a joint venture between Morgan, the car maker, and RiverSimple, a start-up developer of hydrogen fuel cells.

While many still view the quest for speed without consideration for the environment, it is refreshing to learn that a decrease in the carbon footprint is just as important to some car manufacturers these days. OK, there are a barrage of cars that now run on LPG, as well as many low-range, battery-assisted alternative; ethanol even, all a step in the right direction, but very little has been done to make these vehicles attractive, affordable or totally pollutant-free. Until now, that is.

Produced by Morgan Motor Company from Malvern, UK, in association with RiverSimple, a start-up company based in the same area, the car simply known as the LIFEcar (Lightweight Fuel Efficient Car) is making a proud stand against fossil fuels with an honest attempt at zero emissions. After all, there really is no excuse in this day and age for any further damage to be exercised on our eco system, and if that be the case, why should the much-loved sports car market take a beating?

With this firmly in mind, the Worcestershire firm, founded in 1909 and famed for the Plus 4 and the Aero 8 automobiles, has taken a stand to create a car that is both easy on the eye and environmentally responsible. And the performance - well, that's on the cards from fuel cell power. It is a gamble for any car manufacturer to make, but when the project is being spearheaded by none other than Hugo Spowers, an Oxford graduate and founder of RiverSimple, it is less of a leap into the unknown and more of a calculated risk. The British entrepreneur-engineer is probably best known for his involvement in The Dangerous Sports Club, a group of extreme sports pioneers who developed bungee jumping and made the first modern jumps in 1979 from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol England, followed by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. He's to be taken seriously too; he was after all the gentleman solely responsible for the length and elasticity of the bungee cords. Spowers even ran his own Formula 3 racing team for a while, before becoming an advocate for hydrogen power, under his RiverSimple green-issue consultancy.

Styled by a 24-year old, the LIFEcar is above all a technology showcase that will ultimately head into production, but not necessarily in the framework you see here - the car pictured weighs 650 kg, which is half the weight of a conventional steel car. The actual production car will weigh 350 kg and will be a city car not a sports car, adopting all the technology learned from this LIFEcar project. Plans are afoot to build 100 of the sleek LIFEcar sports car if enough interest can be muster at an estimated price tag of £40,000 (Dh213,000).

Being such a unique and exciting clean-sheet approach to the way we travel, one that has driven the project from inception to launch at the Geneva Motorshow in March 2008 in record time, it is clear that there are a number of individuals from the UAE that have shown genuine interest in owning one the cars from the limited production run. Some have hinted that the choice of partner in Morgan is a curious one, but then again it makes perfect sense to hone the possible future of performance propulsion within an age-old design, a company by definition devoid of convention and constriction.

Being in a unique position to utilise existing technology with no preconceived command over what the car should look like makes light of the big conglomerate attempts at developing the first zero- emission production vehicle. Those same attempts repeatedly failed to harness a fresh approach other than their tried and tested conventional petrol and diesel. So while contending car manufacturers have dragged their heels, the LIFEcar project has been steaming ahead; doing so with the help of hydrogen that is stored in on-board tanks at the rear of this breathtaking showpiece car. The fuel source travels through the vehicle as electricity, after the hydrogen meets the negative electrodes in the fuel cell, flowing to power four electric motors mounted on the chassis that then drive the wheels.

To support this, RiverSimple have also incorporated a decidedly proficient brake set-up, which is very much a hybrid system capturing as much as half the energy that would ultimately be wasted under braking. This crossbreed braking process effectively regenerates the bank of sophisticated capacitors that line the spine of the car - storing and later discharging up to 1,000 amps-worth of energy quickly, allowing the LIFEcar to accelerate to 100kph in under 7 seconds. And the waste product of course, from all the above, is nothing more than water.

So is this really the way forward? Well, in principle, yes, even if the LIFEcar has no doors, thereby forcing the driver to clamber over the sill. The seats, dash and footwell are all formed from one springy piece of laminated plywood, which is lighter than carbon fibre and air onside of cool, but how many people will consider a car without leather? And there is, of course, very little in the way of real luggage space.

All in all it is rightly shy of what most customers have come to expect, but with brisk performance, phenomenal braking prowess, around 240 kilometres on a tank of hydrogen and the promise of 250mpg, it's an extremely promising starting point for the future benchmark of the sports car to rest upon. After all, shouldn't we now be putting less emphasis on our own comfort and more on the overall well-being of the planet?