Gordon Murray Design’s T.27 electric city car achieved a clean sweep in the second running of the RAC Future Car Challenge on Saturday.
The T.27 competed against more than 65 entries including the latest technology from 11 major car manufacturers. The lightweight city car won ‘Most Energy Efficient Small Car (Prototype)’, ‘Best Overall Pure Electric Vehicle’ and ‘Best Overall Entry – RAC Future Car Challenge Winner’.
The T.27 covered the 57.13 miles from Brighton to London carrying 2 occupants, inside the allocated time using less than 64 pence worth of energy – Equivalent to 350 MPG (0.81 litres / 100 km) and only 37 gm CO2 / km. On a full charge, taking only 4 hours, the T.27 can do more than 100 miles.
Gordon Murray Design chose the RAC Future Car Challenge to be the T.27’s public running debut after the car’s launch in July this year as “The World’s Most Efficient Electric Car”. The RAC Future Car Challenge is the most relevant event in the world to demonstrate new automotive green technology as it is run in real world traffic conditions producing easy to understand results and bypassing all the advertising hype.
The T.27 design and development programme was a £9 million project, made possible through a £4.5 million investment from the government-backed Technology Strategy Board. Consortium partners include Zytek Automotive Limited, Vocis and Michelin. Gordon Murray Design is currently engaged with 3 possible manufacturers for the city car, one of which is in the UK.
The T.27 is the latest vehicle to use Gordon Murray Design’s innovative iStream® manufacturing process, which aims to significantly reduce lifecycle impacts and enable low cost, efficient manufacture within the UK. The T.27 sets new standards in weight, footprint, small car dynamics, safety, packaging and efficiency whilst addressing full lifecycle CO2 emissions, congestion, parking and low cost motoring.
I met Gordon at a race meeting serveral years ago back when they where still racing McLaren F1 Sportscars. We talked for about 5 minutes. He was a brilliant designer of the F1 as well as several Brabham and McLaren formula one cars. It is interesting to see what he is up to now, after conquering the racing world.
