Committee on Climate Change

Professor Gordon Murray, is a mechanical engineer and car designer. He designed, built and raced his first sports car (IGM Ford) in the National Class in South Africa during 1967 and 68. In 1969, after moving to the UK, he worked in Formula One motor car racing for twenty years as Technical Director, first with the Brabham Formula One Team and then at McLaren Racing. 

1990 saw a move away from Formula One racing to designing cars for the  McLaren Group (where he worked on the F1 Road Car) and then on the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren programme. Gordon left McLaren in 2005 to set up his own company, Gordon Murray Designs, which designs and builds low-carbon cars.

What sort of cars do you design at Gordon Murray?
We take a fresh approach to car design; accepting no compromise in safety, performance, range, space, weight, rolling resistance and ride quality, but also focusing on the environmental impact of cars. We build lightweight, low carbon vehicles and have also designed a new manufacturing assembly process which is much more efficient than the traditional way of manufacturing.

How do you ensure your business limits its impact on the environment?
Lifecycle CO2 emission analysis from cradle to grave show emissions for the T.25 & T.27 City Cars will be at least 40% less than an average car and high level analysis shows that energy emissions from assembly using iStream® (the assembly process) will be reduced by approximately 66%.

How have you managed to reduce emissions from the way that you assemble cars?
The iStream® assembly process is a complete rethink and redesign of the traditional manufacturing process and could potentially be the biggest revolution in high volume manufacture since the Ford Model T. Development of the process began over 15 years ago and it has already won the prestigious 2008 ‘Idea of the Year’ award from Autocar who were given privileged access in order to make their assessment. The simplified assembly process means that the manufacturing plant can be designed to be 20% of the size of a conventional factory. This could reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%. Yet the flexibility of this assembly process means that the same factory could be used to manufacture different variants.

Do you think it is realistic that the UK plans for 1.7m people to be driving electric cars by 2020?
We have the levels of innovation and expertise in the UK to lead in the manufacture of electric vehicles and we need to plan for the electric car market in 2020. But, there is work to be done in reducing the barriers which are currently preventing progress, for example high battery costs, anxiety about the range over which cars can travel and the lack of a charging infrastructure.

What is your connection with the 2010 London Elephant Parade?
I was one of the selected artists and my design (which was displayed in Green Park) formed part of a collection of 260 model elephants which appeared all over the capital.  The artworks are being auctioned off to raise £2 million for the Elephant Family Charity and 15 UK conservation charities.