In A World Without Oil, Riversimple Proposes Killing Obsolescence Too

Why do you have to own a car? Why do you have to buy a new one every once in a while?

After writing how the COVID-19 infection has presented us a world without oil, I remembered that there are other aspects of the way we live today that could also change. Our everlasting impulse to have the best and newest of anything, for example. How programmed obsolescence has been conceived to stimulate and surf that drive. The amount of trash and depletion of natural resources that this behavior causes. What if we get rid of that and car ownership in a world without oil? That is what Riversimple has proposed for quite some time already.

What made me remember that idea was, among other things, Tesla’s new Unsupported Vehicle Policy. Or the company’s promise to allow for an upgrade on the MCUv1 that thankfully was fulfilled last on March 3. The owners that signed the online petition for that said Tesla seemed to want them just to dump their old cars and get a new one to have that issue fixed.

To be honest, we remembered Tesla first because it is the company people want to know about – hence the one we cover the most. But there are bad examples of that with Nissan and PSA, for example. Both companies charge unreal prices for battery pack replacements, respectively, for the Leaf and Peugeot iOn/Citroën C-Zero. They just do not seem to care for reuse, reduce, and recycle.

Riversimple does. In fact, it was born because of that. The Welsh company, which dates back to 2001, proposed a revolutionary car in 2009: the Riversimple Urban Car – RUC for short. In 2016, the company presented the Rasa, and I wrote an extensive article about it on my own website, Motorchase

7 Photos

















































That is what made Riversimple conceive not only the Rasa but its whole business model. The Rasa is much less important than the idea it represents. And it starts by killing car ownership altogether.

Forget about the idea of car sharing. That may seem sustainable, clean, environmentally responsible, but that sucks. A car is an extension of your home. You leave your personal belongings in it. Your sunglasses for when it is impossible to drive without them. A gift, a blouse, sports gear, food, whatever: you know they are mostly safe there.