Welcome to our roundup of the news that's grabbed our attention from across our specialist industries over the last month!
Automotive
Gordon Murray’s “lightest supercar ever built” to be manufactured in the UK – contact us to discuss opportunities.
Gordon Murray is renowned as the man who designed the McLaren F1. Now he’s designed the T.50, which boasts some pretty impressive numbers. It’s equipped with a V12 3.9 litre, naturally-aspirated engine capable of 12,100rpm and 650 bhp. With its carbon fibre chassis it will weigh in at just 980 kilograms – a third lighter than a typical supercar – which gives it a power-to-weight ratio of 663hp/ton.
The six-speed transmission has been designed by specialist UK firm Xtrac, with the car set to be built by Gordon Murray Automotive at its new facility in Surrey. All major components including powertrain, body and chassis will be UK-sourced.
Contact us to discuss opportunities at Gordon Murray Automotive!
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/new-gordon-murray-supercar-claimed-to-be-worlds-lightest/
Motorsport
Honda using jet engine tech in F1 engine upgrades
Honda’s “Spec 3” engine introduced at the French Grand Prix featured upgrades to the turbo and internal combustion engine developed from the R&D team’s collaboration with Honda’s jet-engine programme. Though of course very different, the engines share some things in common, with the F1 turbocharger and MGU-H being similar to the jet turbine.
While race partners Red Bull and Honda have admitted it will take improvements for the team to challenge Mercedes in F1, senior members have hailed the team’s ability to learn from other areas of the business.
You can learn more about our Honda and motorsport jobs using the job search in our menu.
Source: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/144358/how-honda-is-using-jet-engine-tech-in-f1-upgrades
Manufacturing and Technologies
UK tech alive, well and thriving
All the Brexit doom-mongering tends to make it easy to assume the worst for our economy. But actually, UK’s tech centre is going from strength to strength, with more than a third of Europe's fastest-growing tech companies now based in Britain, and the UK producing 13 “unicorn” companies (firms privately valued at more than $1bn) over the past year alone.
The data, compiled by Tech Nation and Dealroom, reveals that the UK is behind only the US and China in creating Unicorn tech companies over the past year. The British tech sector benefited from $35bn (£27bn) of investment between 2013 and 2018, while London leads digital growth across the continent, boasting 45 unicorns including 18 fintech firms.
A further six UK cities are home to at least two tech unicorns apiece: Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Edinburgh.
It’s encouraging news: the UK’s technology and digital tech sectors are going from strength to strength.
Source: https://news.sky.com/story/uk-tech-created-13-billion-dollar-startups-in-2018-11738841
Future Tech
Darwin: the UK project to develop 5G satellite technology for connected vehicles
If your mobile phone suddenly loses signal in a rural “dead spot,” how can your connected vehicle be expected to perform any better? Enter: Project Darwin.
Connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) will rely on high-capacity, fast data networks in order to operate properly. In towns and cities it may not be too difficult for them to stream information to and from the cloud and the IoT infrastructure. But what about in rural areas where mobile data coverage is poor?
A new partnership between the government space agency and O2 will attempt to provide a solution by building and testing seamless high-speed data connections. O2 research suggests that CAVs will generate 4TB of data per hour, while the department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has invested £120m in CAVs since 2014. The collaboration between UK Space Agency and O2 represents an attempt to build on what business secretary Greg Clark describes as a move that will put the UK “at the forefront of the next generation of the self-driving cars of tomorrow.”
The so-called Project Darwin will be based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, with partners including Oxford and Glasgow universities, O2 Telefonica, Hispasat and Darwin Innovation Group. It represents a substantial new market in its own right, with corresponding opportunities for future careers. This is definitely an initiative to watch.
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/uk-space-o2-5g-satellite-cav/
Executives & Leaders
Capita appoints global technology business leader as its new executive officer for government services.
Andy Start joins Capita in August, where he will sit on the Executive Committee and report to Chief Executive Jon Lewis.
Andy has spent 20 years in senior leadership in FTSE and S&P500 international technology businesses, including running the military space business for Airbus, a role as managing director of BAE Systems Avionics and time spent as president of Global Government at Inmarsat.
Government Services is one of Capita’s six divisions, employing over 8,000 people and delivering technology-enabled business services for a broad range of central government, local authority, healthcare and public sector clients.
Graduates
Calling the engineers and technologists of the future: Makers Meet manufacturing and STEM festival, the Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, Saturday 20 July.
In July, Birmingham will host this year’s one-day Makers Meet festival, aimed at encouraging 16-24 year-olds to become the engineers and innovators of the future. Topics will range from AI to the planet’s ecological concerns. The event comes at a time when the fourth industrial revolution sees the human race poised at the cusp of monumental change and innovation, so it is crucial that technology continues to attract and inspire new generations of talent.
Confirmed speakers include STEM ambassador and social media influencer Authentically Ella, Dr John Hart from the Centre for Sports Engineering & Research, Vanessa Sanyauke (named by the London Business School as one of 30 people changing the world) and many more influential technologists.
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/makers-meet-stem-festival-announces-line-up/