It turns out McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray is still tooling away on the design of his T.25 city car, a concept we first saw all the way back in 2010. A new and refined version of the design has been revealed, and a new partnership with Shell has seen the concept vehicle renamed to ‘Project M’ – and is a “co-engineering” project the oil giant thinks could save lots of energy.
The 550kg Project M (Murray?) concept is a collaboration between Shell, Geo Technology and Gordon Murray Design, and each element is “tailored to work optimally” with the others for maximum energy savings. These energy savings have been achieved by “aggressive downsizing and streamlining, while enhancing the efficiency of energy delivery through an innovative engine design and lubricant formulation.”
Shell say the end result is a car which uses half the energy of a conventional family car to build and run, but it’ll only have three seats and a 160-litre boot.. so that’s almost half the space too. It’ll be almost completely recyclable, with the body being made from pre-used carbon fibre, while selected parts are 3D-printed.
At a steady 72km/h (45mph) cruise, the 660cc 3-cylinder engine will return 2.1L/100km (107mpg). The engine has an output of just 32kW (43hp) delivered to the rear wheels via a semi-automatic five-speed gearbox, but this should be more than adequate thanks to the light weight of the vehicle.
1 comment
Isn’t Murray meant to be working on the TVR T37?
Also there’s a small typo. Second to last paragraph, first line. It says ‘var’ instead of ‘car’.