Small cars can yield big savings: Murray

Former McLaren designer Gordon Murray reckons he’s found a solution to one of the auto industry’s big dilemmas: making small cars profitable

What does this odd little bugeye have in common with McLaren’s magnificent F1 road car of the 1990s? A couple of things. The electric and petrol powered T-series city cars hail from the pen of ex-McLaren and Brabham Formula One engineer Gordon Murray. They also share Murray’s signature triangular seating configuration, with the driver in the centre flanked by two passengers behind.

And that’s where the similarities stop. British-based Gordon Murray Engineering’s T.27 EV and its petrol powered stablemate, the T.25 are altogether smaller, uglier and much slower than the F1 (although Murray has developed a one-off sports car based on the T.27). They’re also cheaper. And if Murray has his way, they’ll get even cheaper again. Indeed, that’s their whole point.

One of the great bugbears in the auto manufacturing industry lies in the relationship between volume and profitability per unit. Essentially, the smaller the car, the harder it is for its manufacturer to make it worthwhile making. More so in the current environment of fierce competition, which forces them to pare their margins back and make up the per-unit profit shortfall with volume.

In the basic processes that turn hunks of metal into chassis parts and body panels, there’s not that much between a $25K repbox and a $250K ego-barrow. It’s why Daimler, BMW, Audi and their like are doing so well, why Toyota invented Lexus, Nissan invented Infiniti etc. The bigger and more luxurious the car, the bigger the opportunity to load it up with margin. More so with the advance of the kind of platform sharing that turns Jeeps into Maseratis and Toyota iQs into Aston Martins.

The T-cars are not the drool-fodder one might expect of Murray. They’re about something altogether more complex, and more important. Two decades on from the F1, the industry landscape has changed and his priorities are changing with it. The tiny-tot Ts aren’t just about sustainable urban mobility. They’re also about environmentally and commercially sustainable manufacturing processes. That is, ways of streamlining the manufacture of small cars, thereby improving their economies of scale and making them more attractive to manufacturers.

Murray claims he’s come up with a process that cuts the manufacture of city cars from the traditional five steps to two. "Essentially, we've been making motor cars the same way since the Model T, and that model is breaking down," he told Bloomberg in May.

He’s done it by relieving the process of its costliest elements – those involving the foundrywork that moulds metal into chassis parts and panels. Murray’s process, dubbed iStream, uses a plastic composite material with many of the properties of carbonfibre but costing one 25th as much to make. It’s dressed in plastic body panels as well, eliminating three of the five costly steps associated with traditional automotive metalwork. There’s no more moulding of steel framework, no more welding and no more rustproofing.

Murray claims iStream gives makers the potential to turn out 100K units a year for just 15 per cent of the capital cost of a conventional metalwork facility.

Industry analysts are on Murray’s side. California analyst Eric Noble, from industry consultancy The Car Lab, confirmed to Bloomberg in May the economies of scale issue is skewing viability towards the expensive, luxurious end of the market at the expense of affordability and volume.

The main issue facing him for now lies in up-front investment. “Many automakers are on their financial knees right now, so they can't afford to transition to something different that will involve huge changes to their capital investments,” US industry consultant Maryann Keller told Bloomberg.

The T cars, designed from scratch to accommodate both IC and electric powertrains, are spectacular in their operational and space efficiency, carrying three people on a platform just 2.5m long in total, with a wheelbase of 1.78m. That means it’s smaller than a Smart fortwo and carries one more person.

The T.27 weighs just 680kg all up, battery included. Its 25kW electric motor draws its power from a 12kWh lithium ion battery, taking it from 0-100km/h in a decidedly unF1-ish ‘less than 15 seconds’,  and on to a top speed of 105km/h. The company claims a range of 125-160km.

The T.25’s 660cc three-cylinder petrol engine produces 38kW/57Nm, propelling it from 0-100km/h in around 16 seconds and on to about 160km/h mph. It weighs just 550kg and consumes just 3.5L/100km.

The T.25’s three airbags, ABS, ESP and crush zones were sufficient to earn it four stars in Euro NCAP crash testing. It comes with air conditioning, six-speaker audio and what Murray told Wired is ‘everything you’d want in a commuting vehicle’.

The T.27 is specced up to a similar degree, save for the air – the major drain on any electric powertrain. But Murray has said it’s easy to install for commuters who want it. Without it, the little EV consumes considerably less energy per kilometre than competitors. By the maths Murray quoted to Wired, it uses 25 per cent less energy per km than the Smart EV and Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV, and about 50 per cent less than BMW’s Mini-E.

Murray’s own business model for iStream works on an up-front licensing fee and a per-unit percentage of vehicle sales. Autoweek reports Murray has engaged in ‘exploratory discussions with 10 car companies and five other businesses’ to such effect, but hasn’t yet closed a production deal. But this is far-future stuff he’s working on, and with emissions regulations ramping up with Euro 6 taking effect in Q3 2014, his position will likely strengthen in years to come.

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