When Gordon Murray decided to design an eco-friendly mini-car it caused a bit of stir in the motoring world, and his T.25 made its debut public appearance at the Smith School's World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, UK on June 28.
The T.25 is a design for a new type and class of personal transport vehicle that offers solutions to reduce congestion and parking problems whilst addressing the issue of full life cycle CO2 output. The vehicle is promised to represent a major breakthrough in mini-car design in the areas of weight, footprint, safety, usability and efficiency. It features a compact three-cylinder petrol engine and weighs just 550kg.
Designed to be tiny, efficient and flexible, the T.25's short length allows three cars to be parked in one conventional parallel parking space. Pictures of the car's interior and exterior have also been released for the first time.
A new low-energy manufacturing system is also being developed by Gordon Murray Design in a process called iStream. If successful, manufacturing plants built in the future could be 20 percent of their current size. iStream supposedly reduces the capital investment required to produce a vehicle and also the energy required for its manufacture.
Professor Gordon Murray, hailing from South Africa, is a renowned designer of Formula One race cars and the McLaren F1 road car. He is currently CEO and Technical Director of Gordon Murray Design and is responsible for the design of the T.25 city car and was also central to both the development and validation of the revolutionary manufacturing system, iStream.
Murray commented:
"We are very privileged to have been asked to show T.25 publicly for the first time at the World Forum as the aims of our company are very much aligned with those of the Smith School and therefore this global event."