Build you own green car

Mar 9 2009 Steve Hughes

Build you own green car

AN Austrian automotive specialist design company has come up with a cunning ploy to help the world's major motor manufacturers to fund environmentally-friendly cars despite their economic woes.

Magna Steyr has created a production-ready vehicle that it is offering to as many car companies that are prepared to pay to put their name to it. The infrastructure is built in such a way that several brands could use the same basic platform to make cars that appear to be completely different.

This replicates the concept of current clones such as the Peugeot 4007, Citroen C-Crosser and Mitsubishi Outlander, which are fundamentally the same vehicles arising out of a collaboration of all three brands.

However, manufacturers now need to have electric cars in their line-up even though they cost billions to develop yet sell in relatively small numbers and never recoup even a fraction of their costs.

Magna Steyr, which already builds low volume models for Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz among others, has got one ready to roll but does not have a global dealer network to get it to buyers so it is offering it to those companies that do.

Ford is so impressed with the company that it has awarded a contract to develop an electric version of the Focus but in the meantime Magna Steyr has made its own model and all it needs now are car companies prepared to put their name to it.

The car is on display at this month's Geneva Motor Show, where it is being shown as a fully engineered vehicle that can be adapted to run on a variety of environmentally-friendly forms of power.

It can be built as a battery/electric car, a hybrid petrol or diesel/electric, a natural gas-powered car or even a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. It is designed to meet all crash test standards and the platform is flexible enough to be changed significantly to create each car company's own identity.

``We are hoping that a manufacturer will buy into the basic design, which would allow it to get a fully-engineered green car into production far more quickly than if it were to start developing such a vehicle on its own," says a spokesman.

``Magna Steyr wants the contract to build the cars with our proven Flex Plant concept where all versions can be made on one single production line.'

The show car is a four metre-long five-door model with a 67hp electric motor powered by lithium-ion batteries. It has an average charging time of two and a half hours and a range of up to 90 miles. Solar cells integrated in the glass roof provide additional energy generation and traditional wing mirrors are replaced by rear-view cameras to improve aerodynamics.