IS THIS WATER CAR THE FUTERE OF DRIVING ?

It looks like something from science fiction,runs on hydrogen and pumps out no emissions except water.It,s makers claim,it does the equivilent of a staggering two hundred and fifty miles to the gallon.So it is no wonder this U.K. Built electric car is being spoke of as the future of motoring.Launched today,the two seater with gull-wing doors generates it,s own electrical current using hydrogen,the flamable gas that once provided the lift in Zeppelins.With only forteen hydrogen filling points in the U.K. much of the fuel will be taken up by getting to the gas station and back.The Riverside Rasa,named after the Latin for clean slate,has been developed from scatch over fifthteen years by a band of U.K. engineers and entrepreneurs.It,s creators,based in Wales,have not only defied the conventional wisdom about how to build cars.They also have an unusual commercial strategy,with the vehicles to be leased to customers on a service contract for about five hundred pounds a month rather than being sold outright.This is roughly the same cost as leasing and running a deisel Volkswagen Golf,they say,when fuel,insurence and fuel expences are factored in.The company will cover all repair,maintenance,insurence and fuel expences.The Rasa,which is expected to be on the road by two thousand and eighteen,uses a hi-tech fuel cell to generate electricity from hydrogen gas stored under pressure in a tank in the boot.This drives four moters in each of the wheels.The process also produces water,which evaporates into the air or dribbles on to the road.The best known hydrogen craft Zepelins fell out of favour after one crashed in flames in Germany in the  nineteen thirty severn desaster,which left thirty six dead.The firm behind the new car insists hydrogen is safer than petrol because it is contained in a pressurised tank.Even if it did leak in a crash,he says,the gas would dissipate upwards not pool under the vehicle.He added:Every aspect of the Rasa has been tailor made and interrogated for lightness,strength,affordability and safety to produce a vehicle that will maximise hydrogen as a fuel scouce and minimse pollution.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 ownaship period.The Resa is less than half the weight of a typical small car and can travel three hundred miles on one tank of hydrogen.It,s futuristic design is the work of one of the worls leading designers.He say,s:'We really have started from a clean sheet".