SUCCESSFUL BIDDERS IN THE 14TH INTEGRATED DELIVERY PROGRAMME: PROJECT ‘PARADIGM_SHIFT’: ACCELERATING THE TRANSITION TO ZERO EMISSION VEHICLES
Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and Innovate UK via the Faraday Battery Challenge (part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund) invest a total of £20 million to successful competition winners of the 14th Integrated Delivery Programme. The winning projects will develop low-cost, highly integrated systems to enable zero emission capable journeys for cars, vans and heavy goods vehicles.
Paradigm_Shift is a 16 month project led by Gordon Murray Design (GMD) – an iconic automotive design and engineering company, Delta Motorsport – electrification, hybridisation, and vehicle dynamics specialists, and aiPod – the company that designs city-integrated autonomous mobility systems. The vehicle platform will deliver dramatically lower mass (450 kg), high levels of safety, lower energy, and drive-by-wire capabilities in a small footprint, making zero-emission transport options available more rapidly to the entire population.
Responding to the urgent need for a low-cost, ultra-lightweight vehicle platform, using GMD's iStream superlight® technology suitable for mass-production, the consortium will incorporate a breakthrough level of integrated design and safety performance and ensure the platform is ready for the new era of autonomous driving.
The consortium will design and engineer a ground up small footprint demonstrator vehicle to demonstrate the integrated technology approach that will be available at the end of 2019. The project aim is to deliver a sub 450 kg vehicle to meet M1 levels of safety performance whilst reducing cost and investment to enable development of flexible and affordable electric vehicles. The platform will address traditional driven vehicle requirements alongside the rapidly growing requirement for MAAS autonomous transportation and last mile logistics. The combination of affordable EV in a small footprint offers a solution to the growing emissions, congestion and parking crisis currently experienced in urban environments globally.
Editors Notes
- Gordon Murray Design Limited is a British company operating from Shalford, Surrey. The Company is recognised as a world leader in automotive design and reverses the current industry trend for sub-contracting by having a complete in-house capability for design, prototyping and development. The Company is compact and focused and undertakes automotive and other engineering programmes in an efficient and innovative way. For more information please visit www.gordonmurraydesign.com.
Gordon Murray Design’s patented iStream® technology process is a complete rethink and redesign of the traditional automotive manufacturing process and could potentially be the biggest revolution in high volume manufacture since the Model T. Development. The process began over 15 years ago and it has already won the prestigious ‘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. The iStream® design process is a complete re-think on high volume materials, as well as the manufacturing process and will lead to a significant reduction in full lifecycle CO2. For more information please visit www.istreamtechnology.co.uk. - Silverstone-based Delta Motorsport Limited is engineering for the future (www.delta-motorsport.com). Its background is deeply rooted in high-performance engineering, and it has over 10 years of experience developing technologies through innovation and continuous improvement that enable electrification; for passenger cars and beyond. Delta now has three main business streams.
Powertrain integration and development of a novel microturbine range extender, “MiTRE”, that delivers freedom from range anxiety in a small and light-weight package whilst also achieving extremely low emissions (particularly NOx and particulate).
Delta’s battery systems experience spans 48V to 800V, and it has developed a highly flexible, modular approach to battery system manufacture. These systems can be liquid cooled (using Delta’s patented low cost and light-weight approach), air cooled or uncooled, depending on the application.
Delta launched its in-house EV – the Delta E-4 Coupe – in 2011, and since this time it has been developing strategies to control any actuators fitted to the vehicle that deliver the longitudinal and lateral dynamics requirements, such as traction motors, brakes and steering. In PARADIGM_SHIFT, this control will be completely “by wire”, with no input from the occupant. - aiPod designs and builds systems that enable smart cities to manage the impact of rapidly approaching waves of innovation in sensors and computational technologies and their interaction with rapidly evolving mobility-focused business models. aiPod's vision is to build urban mobility traffic control systems for autonomous vehicles that will help cities transition from individually-owned automobiles to Integrated Mobility-as-a-Service enabled by AVs. To learn more about aiPod, please visit www.aipod.com.
For more information please contact:
Sarah Smith, Communications Officer at Gordon Murray Design on +44 (0)1483 484700 or via email at sarah.smith@gordonmurraydesign.com.