I set up Riversimple to develop sustainable vehicles and, more importantly, the strategies necessary for bringing them to market. A step change in both technology and business model is both essential and possible and, furthermore, the principal barriers are not technical but to do with people, politics and business inertia.

We have just built our first production prototype, styled by Chris Reitz, designer of the FIAT 500. Riversimple is the only car company that hopes never to sell a car - selling mobility as a service rather than a car as a product. We have a multi-stakeholder corporate structure that places a fiduciary duty on the Board "to balance and protect the benefit streams" of 6 stakeholder groups, one of whom is the environment, rather than to maximise the interests of one.

I am interested in the private sector’s potential to take the lead; politicians don’t have the mandate to do so, but they will follow. To do this, we must build businesses that make more money by doing the right thing than other businesses that profit from doing the wrong thing. Capital does not then need to be altruistic to support the right businesses!