Formula One design vet creating eco-smart city car

The styles from Europe this year are decidedly green and small.

Designer Gordon Murray, best known for his work on Formula One racing cars, detailed on Monday a new city car design called the T.25 that is aimed at reducing congestion and lowering pollution.

The planned T.25 in green compared with (going left to right) a VW Golf, a Fiat 500, a Smart Car, and a Mini Cooper.

(Credit: Gordon Murray Design)

Compared even with existing compact cars, the T.25 will be small: it can be parked headlong against the curb, allowing three cars to fit in one parking space.

Gordon Murray Design is about halfway through its two-year planning process and plans to have a prototype on the road early next year.

To lower the car's carbon footprint, the company has rethought the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of the car. For example, many of the parts, including the capacity and body, can be recycled and the manufacturing process is being set up with a minimal number of parts to reduce energy use during fabrication.

The first versions of the car will run on either gas or diesel and get about 60 miles per gallon, the company told Greentech Media.

No more driving around the block to wait for a space. Three T.25's fit in the space for one car.

(Credit: Gordon Murray Design)

The company intends to work with outside manufacturers to lower the cost and sell the car to city dwellers in Asia and Europe for between $10,000 and $11,000, it told Greentech Media.

Overall, the car should have low or zero emissions, the company says.

Compact cars are already more popular in Europe and Asia than in the U.S. Automakers have helped create demand for SUVs and trucks as passenger cars. But with rising fuel prices and growing environmental awareness, city cars appear to be staging a comeback.

The Smart Car is already cruising European and American streets. And Think Global from Norway intends to market its all-electric city car, called the Think City, in Europe and the United States next year.

[turoa76]

In the rest of the world a 'truck' is "a large heavy vehicle, used for transporting goods, materials or troops". In the US it's this AND a runabout for soccer mom. Until this changes people are going to be too afraid to drive a car that will slip under the wheels of said mom.

[shoffmueller]

Soccer, therefore, is responsible for global warming.

[RandyWayne]

"In the rest of the world a 'truck' is "a large heavy vehicle, used for transporting goods, materials or troops"."

Actually, that is true in the US when it comes to farmers and other outdoor-type people as well. But we currently live in the middle of a large city (in the suburbs) and half of the homes in our community have huge jacked up pickups.....

[YankeePoodle]

The days of internal combustion engine are over. You can do a hack here and there, but ICs are done. Its the age of Electric Motors and hybrids which directly convert the fuel to electric energy..

[k2dave]

I don't think they are over, but perhaps over for a primary power source. They are very good at packing a lot of power in a small space, can be refulled very quickly from a very well established infrastructure.
............................
Converting fuel to electrical energy directly right now requires a pure fuel, such as hydrogen. Again something that is not readially available. If the primary fuel is battery power for a plug in hybrid it should be able to run that car on battery power for daily needs (commuting, soccer momming, shopping). It's going to be hard to beat adding a IC engine to allow longer ranges needed for vacations and the like.

[jordousr1]

Why try to cram more and more people a$$whole to elbow on to the planet?

Let's just have fewer people! We need a target population for our country and the planet.

[iSpud]

Will you be the first to go?

[k2dave]

How would one enforce it without violating personal rights? Mandatory medical procedures, forced abortions, throwing babies into bull shaped furnaces?

[kristianna Thomas]

OUCH! The thought of getting into a car that is the size of a roach motel hurts. Yes you can build them small, super-compact and so green you can make the jolly green giant green with envy. Three cars with the space of one. Ohhhh. I am dying. As a person who is over six feet tall, how in the world is any one over five feet tall going to drive this shoe box? KY jelly? Drive with your chin firmly planted on the sterring wheel, and yours knees securely placed on your ear lobes? Height requirements? No one over five feet four inches can drive? All tall nomes have to walk, bike, or use mass transit? How far do we go in making cars small for the sake gas mileage. Maybe the era of the combustable engine is at an end and need to be replaced with a better engine design that is not based on the combustion of fuel and air? This is the era of twenty-first century, why do we still have an engine that was constructed in the nineteenth century?

[k2dave]

Considering that even tall and large people can usually sit in a easy chair in a living room, all it seems required is to make such a car that big, which is smaller then these micro-compacts.

[kwiswall]

That?s great news for skinny pro-green activist and Europeans, but not your average obese American. I?ve seen small smart cars that are on the road these days, they are cool looking. But we need to come up with a better solution to our oil dilemma. But if this small car can make a small difference then we are heading in the right direction.

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[ArtInvent]

Eventually we will have super hybrids like the Volt and the next gen Prius and Honda etc. Right now you can't even get your hands on a Prius or Civic-h for 4 months. A tiny car is really the only way to have great fuel efficiency now. A tiny car is much safer than the alternative - a motor scooter or bicycle - and can get similar mileage. Advanced air bags and safety cages can make them adequately safe.
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The majority of commuters are still alone in their cars today. If you could give them the same mobility, much easier parking, super cheap purchase price and insurance, etc. I think we are reaching the point where it starts to look like a no brainer.
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Just make sure it can seat two people. So many small alt-cars have failed for trying to get away with a one-seater. People just won't buy that. Even a scooter has room for two.

[chonnom]

I owned a honda crx from 1985 that got 45-52 miles per gallon. Sure it was a 2 seater but it had a spacious hatchback for storage and had plenty of pep on the highway. What happened to those fuel efficient vehicles? why is everyone focused on hybrids that get less gas mileage?

[Mr_Reason]

The t25 should be 4 start n cap same as most 4x4, the one thing u cant aviode is tiny car v massive truck, but to be honest and 4x4 would loose that one too. The thing most people forget is the damgeu do building the car, the T25 looks to be very low carbon footprint in manufacturing (little mettle I think as well). If u look at the engery need to melt/pres forge all the parts in a 4x4 it allot more damgeing then the fuel ull use for most of its life....... 2 tons of monster to get stuck in a jam doing 5 ph and carriying nothing more then a brief case. In 2 years time people will look back on this period and go " did I really drive one of those to work".