Gordon Murray, of McLaren fame, launches green car venture
Respected Formula One car designer Gordon Murray is working on a secretive car company, and the from the few clues we’re getting it will use shape and materials design to make cars more efficient.
The company, based in a suburb an outside of London, UK, is called Gordon Murray Design Ltd., and has gotten more than $10 million in a first round of financing. The money comes from Silicon Valley firm Mohr Davidow Ventures and the U.K’s Caparo Group, with which Murray is affiliated. Mohr Davidow has been active supporting other types of cars, such as the Stanford entry in the Grand Challenge, and has been mulling ways that unmanned cars could reduce congestion.
Murray is best known for designing the McLaren F1 supercar of 1994. His McLaren team won eight Constructors Championships in Formula One. His new venture will focus mostly on building a prototype, and it isn’t clear yet whether it will be involved in the actual manufacturing process, Mohr Davidow partner Jon Feiber told VentureBeat. It will not be focused on propulsion technology, i.e., innovating with electric batteries or other sources of alternative power.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
