Gordon Murray Group gets chunky £11m to develop a lightweight EV solution

The Gordon Murray Group has been handed more than £11m - which is what, the equivalent of four T.50s? - to develop more electric stuff. Intriguing.

This government cash injection has been dished out by the UK’s Advanced Propulsion Centre, and it's specifically so GMG can crack on with “a production-ready, ultra-lightweight, low CO2, monocoque architecture" to underpin "a portfolio of class-leading future vehicles.” Doesn’t want much for its money, does it?

Of the total investment, only £5.5m counts as a grant. So the rest will likely need paying back when (or if?) the work starts to bear fruit.

The monocoque architecture project has been dubbed ‘M-LightEn’, but it's not entirely clear if it'll dovetail with the company's existing work or if it's an entirely new side gig.

Reminder: this isn’t Gordon Murray’s first foray into electric vehicles. The Group – made up of Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) and Gordon Murray Advanced Engineering (GMAe) – set about creating a lightweight platform for EVs in 2021, having secured £300m of investment for it.

That was under the banner of Gordon Murray Design (GMD), which later merged with Gordon Murray Electric (GME) to form... Gordon Murray Technologies (GMT). Gosh, that's a lot of acronyms. GMT was sold off the following year, although GMG still has a stake in that business. Got it?

In 2022, it announced it was developing two fully electric SUVs – one of which is for a big car maker – with £50m set aside for a new campus to house its many divisions.

GMG boss Phillip Lee has made no secret of his expectation that the future will be electric, and Gordon Murray himself has enthused about "overseeing these fascinating projects."

We await the armada of sub-tonne BEVs with baited breath...