Sustainability at the heart of new British electric city car

The T.27 is the brainchild of McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray and Zytek Automotive Technology – both now at the forefront of sustainable car design.

Today their £9 million project is receiving £4.5 million of Government money, enabling them to develop four prototypes of the T.27 by February 2011.

The 16-month project will also enable the consortium to further explore the possibility of building a new automotive manufacturing facility in the UK. Gordon Murray’s new British car company, based in Shalford in Surrey, is behind a simplified assembly line, iStream, which the firm claims will use 20 per cent less space and 80 per cent less capital investment than a conventional factory.

Meanwhile, Zytek develops electric and hybrid drive-trains and says it has developed a unique drive-system for the T.27 that will result in “a step change up in overall vehicle efficiency”.

An electric version of the petrol-running T.25, the T.27 is an MPV (multi-purpose vehicle) that is smaller than a Smart car but boasts more cargo space. It can do this by virtue of its modular seating system, which can take up to two passengers or be configured to allow for 26.5 feet of cargo room. The driver seat is positioned at the front-and-centre of the vehicle.

The car, meanwhile, has been designed in a way that minimises the use of materials and keeps the embedded carbon of the vehicle as low as possible. A spokesman for Gordon Murray Design said the body panels, for example, would be made from material originating from PET bottles.

She added: “The T.27 will be the world’s most efficient car because it uses an entirely fresh approach to design and accepts no compromise in safety, performance, range, space, weight, rolling resistance and ride quality whilst adopting the iStream methodology for manufacture”.

The consortium behind the T.27 predict the car’s life-cycle carbon emissions will be 63 per cent less than an average car and 27 per cent less than the nearest electric vehicle rival.

Gordon Murray, chief executive and technical director of Gordon Murray Design, said: “An opportunity to start from a clean sheet of paper combined with our disruptive manufacturing technology will result in a product which truly pushes the boundaries of urban vehicle design."

The £4.5 million funding announced today is coming from the Government-backed Technology Strategy Board (TSB), a public body set up to promote and support the development and exploitation of technology and innovation.

Commenting on the investment, Iain Gray, chief executive of the TSB said: “The partnership between Gordon Murray Design and Zytek is one that we helped found at the start of the downturn and are now delighted to support. It is essential that business continues to innovate despite tough economic times and the development of this new vehicle is testament to the fact that, despite the risk, businesses that innovate now will be better placed to benefit from economic opportunities in the future.”