Gordon Murray Finally Reveals His MOTIV.e City Car with Yamaha

Following on the development of Murray's T.27 electric car, the MOTIV.e is both a more complete vehicle and far more attractive as an urban runabout. The EV's body is constructed of weight-saving plastic panels and molded to fit around the car's dominating, bubble-like glasshouse. The overall effect, in addition to having quite a lot of Smart ForTwo in the profile, is one of a sort of wheeled escape pod. Cool, if you dig the minimalist and futurist vibes.

According to the company, the electric motor delivers 15 kilowatts continuously with a peak of 25 kW, which makes torque to the rear wheels on the order of 658 Newton meters continuously and 896 Nm at peak. Not up on your metric system? Let's say that another way: the MOTIV.e maxes out at around 660 pound-feet of torque to the rear wheels. Yeah, that got our attention, too.

Figuring in an EV-standard single-speed transmission and a overall weight of right around 1,600 pounds, one might expect the initial acceleration of the two-seater to be pretty beastly in its raw state. Still, the Yamaha team has done some substantial work to tame things, clearly, as the stated performance specs for the MOTIV.e include a 0-100 km per hour sprint just under 15 seconds and a top speed only in excess of about 104 km/h. Most importantly, Yamaha figures the 8.8-kWh battery pack should give the EV a range of more than 160 km "real world" and a three-hour recharging time from a "domestic socket" (with a one-hour quick-charge).

As ever, Murray has our attention, and that's before figuring in his the impact of his novel iStream manufacturing process, which is said to involve Formula One-derived composite technologies. When, where, and for how much the MOTIV.e City Car will be on sale are, as yet, unanswered by the official materials we've seen. Expect more on the developing story as we have it, of course.