350 MPH?

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.