Gordon Murray’s Motiv, the tiny, two-seat electric city car created last year on behalf of Yamaha as the latest showpiece for Murray’s super-efficient i-stream manufacturing process, is heading for “a positive announcement” before the year-end, the designer has announced.
The car has yet to receive final production approval from the Yamaha board, though Murray insists that signs from the company are ”all good news”. Earlier this week, Murray showed the car for the first time in the UK at this year’s Low Carbon Vehicle show, held at Millbrook proving ground.
The Motiv, designed to meet European safety standards and design rules, was launched as an electric prototype at last December’s Tokyo motor show, but is also now being engineered for an economical petrol engine as well, Murray says.
“We’ve been doing a great deal behind the scenes on things like model range, factory layout and production procedures,” says Murray.
“It’s all good news and we expect an important announcement in November or December. Yamaha’s people are brilliant engineers and great to work with. The company is the perfect co-operative partner when you’re doing a project like this.”
Murray says he’s never been busier. He has eight different vehicles in various stages of development including an extremely durable light truck, called Ox, which can be flat-packed for easy transportation to the world’s primitive areas and is simple enough to be assembled on site.
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The new mini of our generation?
Really interesting car
If the chassis system is flexible as it appears, we could see manufacturers create interesting niche cars without having to worry about it fitting a shared platform, therefore not compromising their design, or avoiding them not happening at all.