Gordon Murray Creates Green City Car

08 July, 2008 02:51:00

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Famous car designer Gordon Murray, best known for his design of supercars such as the McLaren F1 and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, detailed on Monday a new super efficient and green city car design called the T.25.

His 25th car program, the T.25, is not just about innovative vehicle packaging and lightweight design, it also offers solutions to reduce congestion and parking problems while at the same time addressing the problem of full lifecycle CO2 damage.

"The T.25 is designed to protect our mobility, personal freedom and driving 'fun' while greatly reducing the environmental damage from vehicle manufacturing and running," said Murray. "In short, the T.25 architecture, packaging and manufacturing process promises to be the biggest revolution in the mass production of cars in the last 100 years."

With a footprint about two-thirds that of the diminutive Smart and nearly half that of the new Mini, the Gordon Murray Design T25 may well deliver on Murray's promise to create a new class of small car.

Murray said that three of his cars could be parked sideways in a typical European-sized parking bay.

The first versions of the car will run on either gas or diesel and get about 60 miles per gallon, Murray told Greentech Media.

Murray claims the car will tip the scales at under 1000kg, but without sacrificing safety requirements – at least a four-star Euro NCAP rating is guaranteed.

Customer and partner interest in the T.25 program has been worldwide and Gordon Murray Design is currently in discussion with several prestigious companies and groups regarding both the sale of the T.25 program for volume production and other versions of vehicles using the same manufacturing process. The T.25 concept will not only support a variety of power trains and fuels, the same manufacturing technologies will support different body styles specifically adapted for customers. First markets are expected to be in Europe and Asia.

"The manufacturing process is a complete re-think on the way we build cars and will revolutionize automobile production," said Jonathan Feiber, a board member and general partner with Silicon Valley venture capital firm MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures. "The most exciting aspect of this milestone in the program is that 'real world' costs for the new manufacturing process have shown that all of the company's ambitious targets for a massive reduction in manufacturing, running and lifecycle CO2 damage reductions will be met or improved."

With 12 months of its 24 month program completed on the T.25 city car, the company has completed work on its prototyping workshop, which includes full-size CNC (computer numerical control) machining capability and leading-edge art structural rapid prototyping equipment. Its workshop is fully equipped for prototype build and development and integrates traditional skills and processes with fully mechanized machining facilities. Component design is almost complete with the first prototype build scheduled to begin in early 2009.

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