Former F1 designer creates car without doors that fight gridlock

Car occupies a third of the space of conventional cars when parked and is made from recycled materials.
A former Formula 1 designer has created an environmentally friendly car that can be the solution to the congestion in big cities.
The vehicle occupies one-third the space of a conventional car when parked, is so narrow that it can divide a track with another track or street car and is built off of recycled materials.
Its manufacturing release much of the heavy machinery used by the automotive industry today and requires only 20% of the capital needed today.
Hero of racing fans, Gordon Murray has designed, among others, McLaren driven by Ayrton Senna when the Brazilian won his first championship in Formula 1.
Six years ago, the designer and abandoned the race, taking the same team of engineers who worked with him at McLaren, went looking for a new challenge: to build the tiny T 25, an urban car that he hopes will revolutionize the how cars are built today.

T 25: The Project
Murray's car is built in a shed-based glass fiber, recycled plastic bottles and hollow steel tubes. It uses a fifth of the materials needed to build a conventional car.
The vehicle carries three passengers, weighs 575 kg, is 240 cm long, 130 cm wide and 160 cm tall.
It reaches a top speed of 145 km per hour and should cost around $ 9000.
Proponents say a car like this could potentially prevent congestion on the roads, in view of projections that the number of vehicles on the planet should reach 2.5 billion by 2020.
It can also allow millions of people to realize their dream of owning a car - while using fewer resources vital to the planet, such as water, energy or steel.

'Mentality of Formula 1'
The object that embodies the vision of Murray is stored in a modest building in an industrial area in Surrey, southeast England.
The T 25 has no doors. To enter it, you need to raise the driver's cabin.
Following the pattern of the F1 supercar, the driver sits alone in front of the car in the middle of the vehicle, with two passenger seats located on the back.
Also following the pattern of F1, the T 25 is built with composite materials - and just the cheapest.
The body panels and monocoque car (or base) are reinforced with glass, which costs much less than carbon, says Murray.
"Some of the fibers are (grouped in patterns) random, some are interlaced and others are unidirectional - that's the mentality of Formula 1," Murray told the BBC.
The structure is fixed on a frame made with a steel pipe which "alone is not strong enough."
Murray explained, however, that once the monocoque is glued to the tube in a process similar to how a car's windows are fixed in the body of the vehicle, it becomes "as strong and secure as a conventional car."


Manufacturing
According to Murray, the manufacturing process of cars created by his team, called iStream, is flexible and inexpensive.
He dispenses with the conventional facilities gigantic factories and much of the heavy machinery and highly polluting, such as large presses that manufacture steel components and welders.
To make any change in frame size or shape and color of the car body, just rewrite the software, explains Murray.
That is, the same production line can produce different models in a single day.
Thus, the factory of the future may be smaller and cheaper, and pollute less.

Intellectual Property
Gordon Murray explained that the goal of his team is designing cars that he hopes will be mass produced very soon.
Besides the model for three passengers, Murray and his team - composed of 30 engineers - are secretly developing several different designs - for two vehicles, five and eight passengers, plus a bus.
He emphasizes, however, that his goal is not to make the cars and, yes, show the world that his team is capable of.
"I'm known as a designer, my team is an engineering company, but in fact the essence of our business is intellectual property."
"I want to sell as many allowances iStream for so many people and so many different cars as possible in the world," says Murray.

Economy
The final argument in favor of Gordon Murray visionary of his car, however, is econômico.O use of cheaper components, to a lesser extent, manufacturing structure and a smaller, offers manufacturers tremendous cuts costs and reduces the risks of investing . The factory that builds a car iStream - whatever shape or size of the car - is about 20% of capital investment and 20% the size of a conventional manufacturing plant, "he said. "And (uses) about half the energy." "We ripped the rulebook and threw the window." BBC Brazil - All rights reserved. It is forbidden any reproduction without written permission from the BBC.