Gordon Murray Design’s T27 electric car won best overall entry at this year’s RAC Future Car Challenge, a 60-mile eco-rally designed to establish the industry’s most fuel-efficient vehicles.
The T27 electric car competed against more than 65 entries including the latest technology from 11 major car manufacturers.
The T27 won ‘Most Energy Efficient Small Car (Prototype)’, ‘Best Overall Pure Electric Vehicle’ and ‘Best Overall Entry – RAC Future Car Challenge Winner’.
The T27 covered the 57.13 miles from Brighton to London carrying 2 occupants, inside the allocated time using less than 64 pence worth of energy – Equivalent to 350 MPG (0.81 liters/100 km) and only 37 gm CO2/km. On a full charge, taking only 4 hours, the T27 can do more than 100 miles.
Gordon Murray Design chose the RAC Future Car Challenge to be the T27’s public running debut after the car’s launch in July this year as “The World’s Most Efficient Electric Car”.
The RAC Future Car Challenge is the most relevant event in the world to demonstrate new automotive green technology as it is run in real world traffic conditions producing easy to understand results and bypassing all the advertising hype.
The design and development program for T27 is a £9 million project, made possible through a £4.5 million investment from the government-backed Technology Strategy Board. From a clean sheet of paper to a running prototype the program has taken just 17 months including the design and build of a completely new electric powertrain by Zytek Automotive Ltd, one of the Consortium partners.
The 2.5 meters long T27 can carry three adult passengers. The weight of the car is 680kg including the battery.
The T27 features a 25 kW (33-horsepower) electric motor powered by 12.1 kWh lithium-ion batteries.
Despite the relative small size of the powertrain, the car is capable of reaching 62mph in less than 15 seconds and has a top speed of around 60mph. Driving range is estimated at 100 miles over the New European Drive Cycle (limited to 100km/h) and 130 miles on the European Drive Cycle (ECE15).
