Gordon Murray talks about his 80 mpg T25
Is it possible to make a car that carries 4 people comfortably, meets modern safety standards, provides decent performance and gets 80 mpg for barely more than $10,000? Even more impressive would be to do it without electric or hybrid drive. If it's at all possible, Gordon Murray may well be the man to do it. Murray is one of the most innovative engineers of the past three decades. Like Colin Chapman before him, he believes weight is the enemy. Murray has created plenty of lightweight, high performance road and race cars but his latest project, called T25, is designed to also be practical and affordable. Shorter and narrower but taller than an original MINI, it will have to be a triumph of packaging to meet the stated objectives.
Making superlight cars is nothing new. Doing it with materials that don't cost a fortune is the problem. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Murray drops a few hints about the construction. It's a body on frame design with plastic upper end and steel chassis. Murray is keeping most of the car under wraps until they get all the patents lined up. Hopefully the T25 will be unveiled in early 2010.
[Source: Daily Mail]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Paul 9:47PM (1/06/2009)
Gordon Murray has also built some fairly lame cars in his time, like that road legal 'stealth bomber' styled single seater.
If he ISN'T going EV with this one then he's WAY off target. The basic scientific facts are that any petrol powered internal combustion engine is at best 25% energy efficient. Subtract from the remaining 25% mechanical transmission and idling losses and any gasoline power car is delivery 15% energy efficiency to the wheels...(an incandescent light bulb is 5% efficient). While a car runs an ICE it will always convert 85% of the fuel it consumes into waste heat. He can make his car as light as he wants, the engine will be NO more energy efficient than any other ICE. Until he goes with 90% energy efficient electric motors it’s just the same concept Colin Chapman used over 40 years ago, end of story.
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mister nomer 12:16PM (1/07/2009)
Uh, not exactly.
I, too, believe in EVs but you're missing the bigger picture.
Battery EVs are only as efficient as the power plants providing the power. The laws of thermodynamics that govern ICEs also govern power plants.
Ask yourself, how does that electric motor get its energy?
Your local power plant's thermodynamic efficiency might be:
- in the low 30s if it's an old nuke plant
- in the high 30s to low 40s if it's an older fossil fuel plant
- in the high 40s if it's a newer fossil fuel plant that uses super
critical steam
You only get into the high 50s if you have a brand new, top of the line, combined cycle plant with a gas turbine and ancillary burners (gas, coal, etc) that utilize its exhaust. FYI: The GE Baglan Bay plant (in the U.K.) should break the 60% barrier.
And, even then, you're going to have losses:
- going through the power lines
- going through the wiring in your house.
- going through the charger (converting electrical energy into chemical energy)
- going from battery to motor (converting chemical energy into electrical energy)
And then you lose 10% going through the motor. Plus:
- as you point out, you lose some energy going through the transmission (25% seems a bit high though)
And, finally, batteries (at least the ones we have right now) have to stay in a certain operating temperature range. Martin Eberhard blogged that 25% of his Tesla's battery power went to maintaining its operating temperature. Yee-ouch!
When you add it all up, an ICE isn't necessarily an uncompetitive option for a light weight car like Mr. Murray is proposing.
paulwesterberg 12:48PM (1/07/2009)
I buy wind power for an extra 1 cent per kwh, costs me $5 extra per month. To fill my(imaginary) tesla tank(53kwh, 200 miles) with wind power would cost me less than 7 dollars at 13 cents per kwh. But since the battery management system never lets the pack run dry it would probably cost me closer to $4.
Wind and Solar are renewable/unlimited so the efficiency of the collector/generator is meaningless. What matters is the cost to generate a kwh. The lowest cost per kwh could be attained using a large number of low efficiency, low cost generators or a small number of high efficiency units.
If you have to pay a bunch of money for the fuel source(coal) or generator space(land) then efficiency becomes more important.
mister nomer 1:26PM (1/07/2009)
Hi Paul,
Not disagreeing with you... but just for consideration...
According to the Energy Information Administration:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/
In the U.S. at least, for 2006:
50% of our power was generated by coal
20% of our power was generated by natural gas
19% of our power was generated by nuclear
7% of our power was generated by water (dams)
2% of our power was generated by "petroleum"
2% of our power was generated by "other renewables" presumably wind and solar
I'm all for moving to solar and wind and perfectly willing to spend my money - and yours = ) - to go in that direction but we still have a long way to go before renewables make up a significant percentage of U.S. generating capacity.
So, for the foreseeable future, I think, depending on the intentions of the car, different power plants make more sense under different conditions: pure EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, and pure ICE.
If Gordon Murray and/or the loremo guys in Germany (http://evolution.loremo.com/index.php?lang=en) pull this off we have:
12,000 miles/year X 1/80 MPG X $4/Gal X 10 years = $6,000.
Carbon offsets from Terrapass (http://www.terrapass.com/green-store/carbon-offsets/):
Average-sized car carbon offset one year: $71.40 X 10 years = $714.00
$10K car + $6K gas + carbon offsets = an ICE car almost equivalent to an EV and still well under $20K
And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's a big enough table that there can be a seat for each of these competing technologies.
Red 9:47PM (1/06/2009)
Ahh...plastic top end steel chassis. That low center of gravity should do the handling proud. I'm really looking forward to seeing this vehicle.
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nataraj 2:23PM (1/11/2009)
It makes perfect sense. I've always wondered why should I be carrying around a 1 and half ton vehicle to move my 70 kg body. It is an incredible waste of energy.
So he wants to reduce weight - he doesn't like EV because of the battery dead weight. But the car can be powered by electric motors if need be - I think the basic idea of T25 is how to design and build the car rather than any particular energy source.
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Nick 12:07PM (1/07/2009)
Weight has always been the enemy, at least in countries where gas is expensive. Unfortunately, with our dirt cheap gas in the U.S., we've never seriously worked on reducing it. Maybe this explains some of the problems we have now.
Nick
Electricknick.com
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paulwesterberg 12:36PM (1/07/2009)
We need more research into cost effectively manufacturing chassis and body panels out of carbon fiber.
We also need research into renewable, non-toxic sources of carbon fiber such as bamboo or other waste cellulose sources.
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sean collins 3:01PM (1/07/2009)
NNnnooooo!
Someone had to mention Carbon Fibre at some point. OK, CF is light - but it's energy intensive to make using highly toxic chemicals and at the end of it's life good only for landfill. Making CF cheaper does not change this: low cost - or more correctly not paying the true cost - is what has noth got us into and perpetuated our current problems.
Making any assumptions or statements about the possibilities of 'renewable, non-toxic sources of carbon fiber' is bending the rules. Stick what we know today.
If the T25 delivers on most of it's promises, isn't that enough? In the short term, for what we assume to be a mass market vehicle, ICE is the best solution in the short term (batteries, energy infrastructure, etc). Even if EV is the way to go on paper, nobody has tried to do it on anything like the scale of conventional cars and there may be problems, e.g. we can't all use lithium based batteries - there isn't enough lithium.
I'm not saying I have the answers, but what frustrates most about a lot of the debate going on is that is it seems to be predicated on the assumption that there are simple answers out there. There aren't: we're facing an incredibly complex problem that is going to need a sophisticated, and in all likelihood complex solution.
As a Brit, hearing you guys piss and moan about the efficiency of the T25 when I assume you guys are American where the biggest selling vehicle of the last 25 years is the F-150 raises a smile. A 5% efficiency improvement in such dinosaurs (doubtless this or even more readily achievable with proven tech) would actually make more of a difference than a small cult of T25 owners.
lorincdm 9:06PM (1/07/2009)
Why the hell did Gordon Murray accept an interview from the Daily Mail? It's the English, paper equivalent of Fox News!
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oliver 7:15PM (9/27/2009)
I may be late to the discussion but Gordon Murray is right: both from a practical reason and realistic solution point of view. It is sad that today corporate culture has moved from engineering influence to the business school model (also my education) to the point that no major manufacturer is following his path. But then that may be the opening that makes Mr Murray succeed.
In the future automobiles will be powered by different means depending on application. I agree with the above on being skeptical that electric cars are the magic bullet people want to believe. I believe there will be many short range electric cars because policy will drive that as will the desire of few to be greener (whether they understand the legacy issues of their batteries and power generation or not) . If people like the "Better Place" proponents succeed there will be even more (a battery exchange / lease company). The natural gas lobby has a very compelling case in the USA that for now is mostly ignored (and this to me demonstrates just how much ignorance exists on the matter). Never the less. Good design has a way of prevailing. We too are working on a very light car, though modeled for the American market, and as such I very much understand the complexities. We too choose conventional metals for recyclability and cost reasons. This separates us from the Toyota 1/x and the VW 1 Liter which are excellent products, though I believe for now more marketing and learning tools than real efforts.
Gordon Murry is correct with smart use of steel. Gordon Murry is right with light weight.
Gordon Murry is certainly going to move the goal post. However most important is this: A light car uses less energy than a heavy one. This is regardless if it is electric or ICE. The gentleman with the point of the 70kg person in the heavy car is right and so is Gordon Murry. If he succeeds we should all buy one just to make the point. This is the lowest hanging fruit by far...
Oliver Kuttner
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