Gordon Murray is the creator of arguably the greatest car of all time, the McLaren F1. He’s continued to design cars ever since, culminating in the T50 and T33 supercars that are now built by his own company, GMA.
During that time, he developed a vehicle called the Light Car Company Rocket. Designed entirely around lightweight and fast speed, the little car was powered by a 1,000cc Yamaha engine and weighed just 850 pounds.
All of this experience arguably makes him the perfect man to achieve something that seems impossible today: building a lightweight electric car for the masses. Now the UK is giving him just the right reason to do it: with just £11,493,235.
The funding is part of the UK Advanced Propulsion Centre’s £88 million Innovation Fund, with 46 projects selected as recipients. Gordon Murray Group (GMG) submitted an application focused on the development of a monocoque structure called M-LightEn, which appears to be a combination of three words – monocoque, lightweight and energy – as all three words appear in the grant.
Specifically, APC says the funding will go towards “the development of production-ready, ultra-lightweight, low-CO2 monocoque architectures and solutions for a portfolio of best-in-class future vehicles.” Without a doubt, significantly reducing a car’s overall weight almost always has a fairly positive impact on performance (both fun and fuel economy). (Editor’s note: At least, that’s the case in stop-and-go driving situations. At high speeds, aerodynamics dominate the efficiency equation. -DT).
The lightest EV on sale today is the Fiat 500e, which is said to weigh just under 3,000 pounds. The MINI Cooper SE apparently weighs around 3,100 pounds. (Editor’s Note: The 2019 BMW i3 BEV is significantly larger than these two, with a bigger battery, but weighs just under 3,000 pounds. -DT). That doesn’t seem so bad, but these two can only go 100 miles on a single charge. The Nissan Leaf weighs around 3,600 pounds (with a single rider weighing about the same as an E39 BMW 5 Series) and has a range of just over 200 miles.
EV manufacturers have primarily employed one strategy to improve range estimates: bigger batteries. Naturally, larger batteries add significant weight, which tends to necessitate larger certain components, resulting in a vicious cycle of more weight, less range, and bigger batteries. In the case of the GMC Hummer EV, the battery weighs (by itself) 2,923 pounds, yet the range is only just over 300 miles.
Then again, if anyone can build a lightweight EV, it’s Gordon Murray, so it’ll be really interesting to see what he comes up with here. Whatever it is, GMA may end up using it for other things besides just EVs, according to Autocar.
Jean-Philippe Roenberg, business director at GMG, told the magazine that M-LightEn’s goal is to “make cars significantly more energy efficient to build and run, and contribute to decarbonizing the UK. What’s more, the additional weight savings achieved by M-Lighten will directly enhance the already legendary dynamics of our cars – taking driving perfection to the next level.”
Murray has already designed a few lightweight city cars, including one released a few years ago called the Motiv, which was essentially an urban people mover with a range of about 60 miles and a top speed of just 40 mph.
In 2021, Gordon Murray Electronics was born with the objective of designing “the lightest, most efficient, and most advanced EV (electric vehicle) in the world.” It has since been integrated into the Gordon Murray Group, but its mission appears to remain unchanged. In its announcement, the team revealed that it continues to develop lightweight EVs. Surely, this new influx of funding will help bring that vehicle and others like it closer to production.
GMG is not the only transport giant to receive UK government funding: Jaguar Land Rover received £6,341,420 to develop a UK supply chain to mass-produce lightweight composite technology for the automotive industry.
Ford received £8,439,514 for a project called E-Steel, which will focus on electronic sheet stamping and lamination, according to S&P Global.
Electrical steel, or silicon steel, is an iron-silicon alloy that has better magnetic properties than other types of steel alloys, making it optimized for a wide range of electrical machines, from power and distribution transformers to electric motors.
UK-based Magtec is working on next-generation electric drivelines for electric trucks for Royal Mail, Triumph Motorcycles has secured funding to develop its second-generation electric motorcycle platform, and Intelligent Energy is working on 200-plus kW fuel cell systems for heavy trucks.
All of this seems like a concerted effort to electrify more than a few cars here and there. But at the end of the day, what I’m most excited to see is what Gordon Murray comes up with. If it’s half as good as his best works, we might see cars that make the most of small batteries that are relatively clean to manufacture. And that’s what the world needs.
