Yamaha Motiv city car almost production ready

Gordon Murray’s Motiv, the small two-seat electric city car is heading for “a positive announcement” before the year-end, the designer has announced. It was created last year on behalf of Yamaha to showcase Murray’s super-efficient i-stream manufacturing process. Gordon Murray has been a designer for F1 cars and also McLaren’s F1 road car.

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”. Murray showed the car for the first time in international markets at the Low Carbon Vehicle show, held at UK.

The Motiv, designed to meet European safety standards and design rules, was launched as an electric prototype at the Tokyo motor show 2013, 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.”