Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
200-220)
MOTORSPORT INDUSTRY
ASSOCIATION, MOTOR
SPORTS ASSOCIATION
AND LOLA
GROUP, COVENTRY
UNIVERSITY
15 DECEMBER 2009
Q200 Chairman: What attracted you
to it and why do you praise it?
Mr Manahan: Well, I praise it
because I think it is a really good, concrete way of delivering
something tangible. The AMRC is a department of the University
of Sheffield which was very far-seeing and they engaged with Boeing
to create the AMRC and, what they call, the "factory of the
future". It was, I suppose, a way of galvanising support
for the traditional skills associated with that area. You have
got a lot of metalwork suppliers and you have got a good tradition
of technical industry around there. They established the AMRC,
as I said, in conjunction with Boeing. Lola is a board member
of the AMRC, but they have various representations from machining
companies all the way through to aerospace companies, and they
do a number of things. They have composites departments, they
have got departments which are trying to bring a link between
academia and industry with real relevance to new technologies
as well, and I think "relevance" is the key word for
them.
Q201 Chairman: You said you did not
have any engagement with academia, but you have a good relationship
with Sheffield and a good relationship with Warwick, two of the
country's finest universities, so you seem quite deeply engaged.
Mr Manahan: We do, I suppose,
in those two instances. The only thing we have done with Warwick
is give them a car, to be honest, which was not a great deal of
hardship for us. We are very keen on our relationship with the
AMRC for a number of reasons. They are very good at getting European
grant funding for research programmes. They do not get all of
them that they go for, but they have got a better batting average
than most, and I think a lot of that comes down to the very excellent
work that Professor Keith Ridgeway does. I will give you a small
example, if I may. There are new technologies all the time in
the carbon fibre world, and you were mentioning earlier on that
aerospace is not maybe as fast as motorsport at embracing some
of them, but there are things like fibre tape-laying procedures
and things like that which are very interesting to people like
us. Now, we could never afford a fibre tape-laying machine, but
the fact that the AMRC have got together the funding to buy one
and allow us industrial time on it is very useful to people like
us, otherwise we would not have a chance to look at that ourselves.
Q202 Chairman: I am going to ask
you a question I know the answer to before I ask it, but I must
just ask it. Were you aware of an advanced manufacturing facility
being established by Advantage West Midlands in the West Midlands
area?
Mr Manahan: Where is it?
Mr Aylett: It is in Coventry.
Q203 Chairman: It is in Coventry,
is it not?
Mr Aylett: I was going to ask
that too!
Q204 Chairman: The Government has
just given a big grant to enable the establishment of the advanced
manufacturing facility in Coventry, which seems to be doing the
same thing as Sheffield is already doing, to me, but that is what
I have heard already.
Mr Manahan: The answer to the
question is no, I was not.
Q205 Chairman: Thank you, you are
giving the answer I expected.
Mr Manahan: I hope it is successful
because that would be good news. Is there a danger that it is
going to duplicate effort? That is the question.
Chairman: That is the question I was
asking myself, yes, and that is something we will need to reflect
on, absolutely, yes, exactly.
Q206 Mr Clapham: Before I look at
innovation, just coming back to the education scene and what was
said about Sheffield and the factory of the future, it seems that
what Sheffield have got is putting together, as you said, things
that are relevant. It is looking at, for example, the aerospace
industry as well as the motorsport industry and it seems to be
that kind of ingredient that makes it very relevant particularly
to your industry, Mr Manahan.
Mr Manahan: Absolutely. The fact
that we can be sitting round the same table as Boeing is useful,
though, I have to say, we have not done any business with Boeing
yet, but hope springs eternal, with the factory of the future
concept and the kinds of things that we can get involved with
and the kinds of technologies we will have access to. I will give
you another small piece of relevance, if you like, as an example.
We won the Watchkeeper airframe programme, so we manufacture and
supply the Watchkeeper airframe to U-TacS, which is Thales and
Silver Arrow, for the UK's medium-range tactical UAV. Now, there
are something like 350 metallic parts on each airframe that we
make and we place the order for those parts through the AMRC with
one of their constituent metalwork entities that were set up for
aerospace-grade metalwork parts. That is just one good example
of how they have helped two of their entities to do good business
with each other.
Q207 Mr Clapham: And of course the
sort of transfer of innovation between the two industries that
we are talking about. I do not think that we could over-emphasise
the importance of innovation to the motorsport industry, but how
do we sustain the momentum of innovation, particularly as we are
coming out of a period of recession?
Mr Aylett: This is one of those
things that, as I am in an innovative industry, you are in the
woods, looking out rather more than talking to my friends who
are looking in, saying, "How do you maintain that innovation?"
so I can only speak on behalf of motorsport. They retain this
innovation through competition, aggressive, dynamic, hourly, daily,
weekly competition for which they are instantly rewarded either
down at the pub with a good story because they won or financially
because someone has paid them for winning, but they get an instant
reward. I am a passionate believer that there is one area of massive
hidden value in this industry and that is the exploitation of
IP. If you ever want to have some fun and check out with the Patent
Office how few patents have been lodged by British motorsport
companies over 50 years, you will be aghast because they spend
30% of their sales revenue, which is twice the pharmaceutical
average, on R&D and yet they patent virtually nothing.
Q208 Chairman: Because, by the time
they patent it, it will have been taken.
Mr Aylett: Well, they have found
a better way of exploiting than the IP mechanism. Our frustration
is that it sits there as this untapped power for Britain that
could take it into so many areas, but they are in such a competitive,
innovative chase that they put it under the bench, and these are
their own words, and they will come back to it one day. As one
of the team members said to me, "Chris, your concept of IP
exploitation and this royalty business and this publishing it
and advertising it and so on, if I just win the race this weekend,
I get $10 million. Isn't that exploitation?" and, as he flew
past me in his jet, I thought maybe he does understand the exploitation
of IP better than I do! Nevertheless, Britain, if we could ever
engage correctly with our national government, this has to be
statistically one of the most amazing values that has yet to be
taken. We got a little grant from MDUK. We came up with a scheme
three years or four years ago where we took 30 companies from
Britain's motorsport industry and took them through an innovative
IP exercise, and they were our role models. We found these guinea
pigs and they signed up, and there was a Formula One team and
so on and we got enough money from MDUK to take them through an
IP process so that someone like Lola or Williams, it did not hurt,
made some money and it happened. Sadly, MDUK, after the first
year when they had attracted 120 companies, pulled the plug and
said that was it. We had already stimulated the interest and then
it just stopped. I can tell you, having stayed in touch with those
companies, that none of them went forward with any exploitation
at all because they just needed that guide, they just needed the
book at the end of the journey to say, "It worked, you know,
and we carried on winning races because the real concern is that,
if we faf around with these things called "IP exploitation"
or whatever, just imagine if we are beaten on the race track,
and the only defence we have for our sponsor is, "But we're
filling in our patent application forms right now", which
would not go very well. In terms of innovation, I have to bring
it to you all, there was a super article in the Sunday Times
this week, when I was with people from X-Prize in America. This
business about revolution through competition, I recommend you
look at the X-Prize in America where they have put up a prize,
do you remember, for this driverless vehicle. Audi are now going
to go into this motorsport competition, Pikes Peak, one of the
world's most complicated rallies with a driverless car two years
after being involved in that competition, which they failed to
win, by the way. I think they lost their car and it is still driving
round the desert, but they had a go. Just recognise that competition
is a great driver for innovation, and they do not cost vast quantities
of money, these are $1 million/$½ million, and they just
pack innovation into competition because it is what people enjoy,
innovators actually enjoy, and they are unique innovators, they
are aggressively competitive people and they are very rarely passive.
Mr Hilton: They certainly would
not want to share it for the next season though, would they!
Mr Aylett: Not in motorsport terms,
but nevertheless, it is innovation through competition and the
encouragement of competition in X-Prize. Virgin Galactic came
out of an X-Prize. That whole programme has come out of attacking
an X-Prize. Now, Britain would not aggressively attack innovation.
Bleriot flew the Channel for a Daily Express prize; it
has been going on a fair while.
Mr Manahan: Survival drives innovation
too, and innovation and rapid response has been the vehicle by
which we have certainly found success in the defence and aerospace
field.
Q209 Mr Clapham: So we have got the
two ingredients of competition and survival, but we have just
gone through a very difficult period and we are just emerging
and, given that we were talking earlier about the way in which
competitors, like the Malaysians, are breathing down our necks,
as we move out of the recession, is there sufficient momentum
there to get us back to the kind of innovation that is going to
keep us in the lead?
Mr Manahan: I have not seen any
evidence that we are moving out of recession.
Q210 Mr Clapham: Well, there is some
evidence that things are beginning to get a little bit better
and, okay, some of our competitors may have moved a little bit
quicker than we have out of the current situation, but it is so
important that we keep that innovation and, as we move forward,
we need to see that the momentum is there. Do you feel that there
is such vigour there that we can maintain the momentum as we move
forward from the recession?
Mr Aylett: No, and I honestly
hear more words spoken about innovation than action and it is
a very easy word to throw around. You need to sit in a room of
innovators to realise how dynamic, aggressive and fast-moving
they are. You reminded me that there is a good lesson there, that
delivery in a period of time is innovation in itself. I feel that
we have read about innovation and we have talked about innovation,
but I do not think we are as vigorously pursuing it as we should,
and we are talking nationally now. We are human beings as well
as running governing bodies and so on and I do not feel an air
of vigour in innovation. I was encouraged by the recent change
in the R&D tax credits which sounded a little bit of support
to help people, but to say that was vigorous support would be
generous. It is clever and it is useful and in fact I think the
whole R&D tax credit programme was good, and in fact our industry
has prospered from it, profited from it and innovated because
of it, so it has worked, but to suggest that the word "vigour"
comes to mind, not necessarily and it is vigorous opportunity,
as I say, where prize awards or something to capture the imagination
could work.
Q211 Mr Clapham: So how do we do
it? Does it need a national plan? You have talked about the ingredients
of competition and survival, but those are within a framework,
shall we say, so is a national plan necessary for the motorsport
industry so that we get competition and we get survival within
that framework driving this forward?
Mr Aylett: I think that, if you
go back to the letter of 2001, that was an integral part of DTI
saying, "These are the most innovative people. If only we
could capture how they are so innovative, our advanced engineering
community", and that was 10 years ago nearly, "would
be better off to understand how they do it, what they are doing
and how Lola is able to respond so much more quickly than someone
who doesn't have that motorsport heritage". We do not have
the time to study ourselves, nor the money as a sector, but there
are clearly lessons that it could utilise.
Mr Hilton: I think that the competition
is more at a world level. The French plans, which seem to have
gone on hold at the moment, to build a motorsport centre outside
Paris, that is trying to create a whole halo effect to draw the
engineering into France away from the UK, so I think that is the
challenge and it is a world challenge rather than UK.
Mr Aylett: Professor Porter of
Harvard was very keen to point out that Britain's success was
on a global scale in this particular sector, and not in many other
sectors do we succeed on a global scale, but we step up every
weekend and put our necks on the line. If I may say, it is a sad
demise of Toyota's Cologne exercise, but the Japanese decided
that they would invest outside Motor Sport Valley UK—but
billions of dollars later when they have not won anything. In
an engineering competition, if you like, the Scrapheap
Challenge every weekend on television, they have had a
fair go at it and they have retired hurt. We are good at it and
really we should know more about it, recognise it on a global
scale and then we would have an innovation plan. I am kind of
surprised that we are not doing that with the Technology Strategy
Board, if I am honest, but, as I have not engaged very closely
with them, I am not too sure what we are meant to be doing with
them.
Q212 Mr Clapham: A little earlier,
Mr Aylett, you mentioned the tax credit system. What would be
the impact, for example, if the tax credit system were to be stopped?
What would be the impact on the industry?
Mr Aylett: Well, it is strange,
but, when we had our day in Parliament this summer and I wandered
around with my friends from Lola and all the others, I do not
want to exaggerate, but they said that it would be a disaster,
and that is in a relatively short time since, and we had been
very proactive working with the Treasury on some of the wording
to make sure it helped the sector and then promoted it like hell
because it is made for us. Almost every one of our large and small
companies is involved in some way. I was trying to get a kind
of league table from the Treasury, saying how good are the sectors
at claiming the tax credits because I have a feeling that we will
be in the premier league of claiming tax credits in terms of R&D.
There were many instances reported to the ministers that we met
on that day, specific instances where, had we not received the
credit for that, we would not have done that, we would not have
been able to do that. There were small companies, and I remember
one chap who said, "Well, I got £40,000 and that enabled
me to buy a design engineer to get to work on a project",
which was exactly the concept of the tax credit, and you can ask
me for specifics and I could go and get specifics, but they are
legion in just three years, so it would be very, very damaging
to our competitive position.
Q213 Mr Clapham: The tax credit system
is not due to be evaluated anyway before 2014. Has there been
any particular announcement for the cause of the rumour that the
Government may be looking to drop the system?
Mr Aylett: I think it was just
rumour at the pub, I suppose, that you could put it down to, I
do not know. A change in government would be an opportunity to
change the bed linen and R&D tax credits may not be there.
I could not be more delighted if I were proved incorrect. Certainly
we were robustly interrogated by Kenneth Clarke on this matter
and you could gain from his robustness that he was not entirely
enamoured with the tax credit system. I think he was hinting towards
some abuse by larger companies rather more than the smaller companies,
"abuse" is probably too strong a word, where the larger
companies would be doing it anyway and it is the smaller companies
that we are trying to promote, but that was a hint in a conversation
that might have led to a large company saying, "I think they're
going to knock this on the head", and that is how we wandered
away, as I said, to the infamous pub and we said, "Maybe
that's where the story comes from".
Mr Manahan: I was at a dinner
with Kenneth Clarke not too long ago and it was more than just
a robust hint.
Mr Aylett: It is obviously developing!
Mr Manahan: It was a robust hint
with a great big torpedo with a JCB behind it. He left us in no
uncertain terms that R&D tax credits were going to be going
in the event of a Conservative Government, which is disappointing
from my point of view.
Mr Clapham: Well, having heard what has
been said, Chairman, I think we have got to make sure that they
do continue and we have got to emphasise it.
Chairman: The Committee will make recommendations
on this subject before the election and whoever wins it will listen
to our recommendations, I am sure. We are entering the final lap,
you will be pleased to hear, and we have negotiated more chicanes
getting here than I expected and we are running a little bit longer
than I expected.
Q214 Lembit Öpik: There is just
one question which I have always wondered about in terms of innovation.
The industry sets quite specific regulations in terms of what
you can do to your cars and limits everything, I guess, from fuel
tanks to everything else. Does that stifle innovation? Does that
stop development or is it specifically because it enhances innovation
and development that you have those regulations?
Mr Hilton: It is really to try
and get fair play. If you have got a sport, why you have a governing
body is to provide rules which are common rules which everybody
uses, fair play. If you look at innovation as far as perhaps the
environment is concerned, certainly we have changed our regulations
that we will accept any alternative fuels as long as they can
be used in a fair competition, so we do what we can not to stop
innovation, but we have to have rules and you change the rules
as you go along.
Mr Aylett: So speaks the legislator!
I have to say, actually the legislator, and I saw you shaking
your head, has been the most stimulating for innovation absolutely
because the envelope of the engineer is then defined. Our guys
go right to the edge of the envelope and, when they can get away
with it with the legislator, they test their innovation by just
stepping beyond, but, if you had no boundary, then it would be
difficult to know where the effort has to go, so we have investigated
that until I am blue in the face because I was, rather like yourself,
saying, "Is it good or is it bad?" In actual fact, to
say that we will allow kinetic energy recovery from wheels, and
not much more than that, within two years they have created kinetic
energy recovery systems that they are now exporting around the
world.
Q215 Lembit Öpik: So you actually
feel that what you are doing, that the actual limitations or the
defined envelope is the best way to create innovation that can
then be reapplied in the commercial sense?
Mr Hilton: Some of it is controlling
costs as well because certain teams of innovators will spend every
penny they have got to win and it is not good for the sport for
millions and millions being spent just to win, so you restrict
the materials being used, you restrict titanium and magnesium.
Mr Aylett: But then we find ways
we can make better materials to get around the regulations.
Q216 Chairman: I said to you at the
beginning do not agree with each other, but I sense that Mr Manahan
is just boiling up to say something.
Mr Manahan: Really?
Q217 Chairman: Are you not? I do
not want to cut you off if you are.
Mr Manahan: I have got a whole
engineering staff who do nothing else but dream up new ways to
figure out how to make our cars faster within the confines of
the new regulations that come out every single year when something
comes along. I remember even as a boy, before I started working
at all, being absolutely amazed at how in motorsport each year
somebody would come out with a new regulation which would apparently
make the cars slower, and one or two years later lap records would
fall, and I thought to myself, "Blimey! There's your innovation
right there". It is the halo effect of that motorsport brilliance
in innovation that has not made us attractive to other industries,
such as the defence and aerospace people who design by committee.
Our offering in to them has been a breath of fresh air and it
has made us hugely attractive and very successful in getting things
out, and I am probably getting a bit carried away here, but I
believe very strongly in supporting our troops on the ground and
we get solutions to them faster than anyone else. The big boys
of British Aerospace and Thales, et cetera, et cetera, have seen
that now and some of the things that we have done and some of
the things that we have achieved I am particularly proud that
we have done, and we have delivered real benefit to them in theatre.
Mr Aylett: And those deliveries
actually are weeks, days. I will not bore you because we are running
out of lap time here, but in terms of helping people on the ground
in Afghanistan and so on, motorsport innovation has delivered
solutions in days that would take months, so say the guys on the
ground.
Q218 Chairman: We are in danger of
going over familiar territory again. You mentioned fresh air and
that brings me to the last of the questions on carbon dioxide,
being desperate for a link! I will try and wrap this up into one
question, if I can. You, I think, the MIA, said in your submission
that the Government has failed to engage with the industry on
low-carbon technologies. We have heard concerns expressed that
the Government has distanced itself completely from Formula One
and high-end stuff because it is instinctively "ungreen",
it is quite the antithesis of the agenda. We have also heard that
actually the engagement between motorsport and the automotive
sector is declining because performance is not the game in town
for the automotive sector now and actually it is fuel economy,
it is those issues which, although they are important, given the
tank restrictions you are facing, it is more about performance
and that is more aerospace, so what can you do for carbon? Is
the Government disengaging because it feels you are not really
green?
Mr Aylett: Your legislation has
helped, and that is an interesting starting point.
Mr Hilton: As the regulator, the
FIA set up more than two decades ago an alternative fuels commission
to investigate where we could go as a sport. After 20 years, they
had realised that it is not about alternative energy, it is about
sustainability. It is a bigger thing than just the fuel we burn
or the energy that we burn, it is about noise, it is about the
use of tyres, it is about the environment, the damage we may do
in the forests. All of these issues affect motorsport, but I think
motorsport can be used as a pilot. We can very quickly, very rapidly
test new ideas through the universities or through the teams,
but motorsport will always go where the manufacturers go because
it is this 5% on the top which are the single-seaters, the Formula
Ones and the F3s and they are not road cars, but the rest of motorsport
operates off road cars, so we are really driven by the automotive
industry. People are using road cars and modifying road cars for
motorsport, so we will never go in a different direction from
the motor industry. We will always follow the motor industry because
95% of the vehicles used in motorsport are road cars, modified
road cars, so I think let us use motorsport as a pilot as a rapid
way to test new technologies, but that is a personal opinion.
Mr Dickison: I think certainly
in terms of the green environment, concerns that sports cars,
race cars, everyday cars, it is not just a question of changing
to say, "We're going to have all-electric cars now",
but it is getting weight out of the vehicles as well and that
is highly relevant to motorsport and it is also highly relevant
to aerospace as well, so we see more and more applications where
people are trying to get relatively low-cost motorsport vehicles
and indeed niche vehicles using exotic materials. Up until now,
it has been, "Well, the materials are just too expensive,
there's no point even thinking about it", but of course,
as time goes on and as people realise they need to find a solution,
the innovation comes out. For example, with carbon fibre, it has
always been a very labour-intensive process actually making things
out of carbon fibre, it has been an expensive material, and it
has just been disregarded, "Oh leave that for the top-end
cars", but of course now processes are coming into place
where you can actually make very lightweight structures at a far
lower cost, especially if the volumes are going up, so I think
that there is a lot of connection there with the environmental
green issues and with motorsport and not just Formula One, but
dropping right down to track day cars and things like that.
Mr Aylett: Again, if I may say,
going back to my original halcyon days of DTI relationships, the
DTI saw a national opportunity that we put to them. I wrote a
paper to the industry, saying, "What future is there for
motorsport in an energy-efficient world?" and the cumulative
opinion was very little, and this was in 2000. Now, that meant
that there was no strategy to cope with an inevitability, so it
gave an opportunity for the MIA. We went to the DTI and said,
"Would you like to fund some research into this because there
is a good opportunity here?" and they did. We ran an investigation
for a year, 80 engineers from motorsport, tree-huggers to the
left, space cadets to the right.
Q219 Chairman: Where was Jeremy Clarkson!
Mr Aylett: To be honest with you,
it was very interesting. En route, we discovered many things and
the most important thing I would love the Committee to know is
that we uncovered the fact that, since the very first race, at
the heart of motorsport has been the efficient use of energy.
If I may say, Mr Chairman, you were incorrect and it is not high
performance in terms of speed, it is the efficient use of energy.
They were only doing 30 miles per hour all those years ago, but
they were using their block of energy, which could have been steam
in those days or it could have been gasoline or it could have
been diesel, ethanol or methanol, but they just used it efficiently
and they used it by great aerodynamics. They did not know there
were aerodynamics in those days, but they put a pointed bit on
the front and a square bit on the back and it went a bit quicker,
and they did it with lightweight materials, they did it with better
use of tyres and grip. This group uncovered that actually in Britain,
if you believe that the motorsport industry is a jewel in the
crown, as Porter did and does, then you would utilise the fact
that you have over the last 100 years created the world's greatest
pool of engineers, skilled in the efficient use of energy, and
it was a most fabulous revelation for us as an industry. Now,
they could not care less, that was the sad fact, because they
just wanted to race and beat someone and, when we said, "You
have an asset that's going to be valuable to Britain because they
will want to know how we efficiently use energy", they said,
"Well, call us when it happens and maybe we'll sell a bit
of that knowledge". Of course, the date it would happen would
be when the cost of energy made it interesting to people to try
and save energy, so it was related to that. Hidden in there, we
put forward this paper on energy-efficient motorsport and created
the brand of energy-efficient motorsport and, I have to say, and
Colin and I go back long enough, we were ridiculed to some degree.
It was not instantly understood because how could motorsport be
energy-efficient, but in fact it was inherently anyway and it
was almost just a branding exercise. Since then, the most important
thing that came out of it, whether we are at the forefront of
the changes, the one thing that we can do, and Lord Drayson has
spoken on this just now, as a passionate convert to this particular
line, winning in motorsport actually makes energy efficiency cool.
If you can win Le Mans in an energy-efficient manner, as Audi
did, you will definitely do so. If 100 years of cars on the forecourts
have been sold by winning in motorsport, then clearly, if you
win in an electric car, then you will make the public aware of
the fact that, "Actually, that is quite a cool solution,
I could buy one of those". We found, and it sounds so obvious
now, that actually you can utilise the power of the motorsport
brand to make energy efficiency cool. Audi seized on it immediately
and used their bio-ethanols, diesel first of all and then second-generation
diesel, and a very proud story, a very short one: Shell were dismissive
on first being approached by Audi with their diesel and after
just 18 months, they said, "You'll be wrong. If they win,
everybody will want it. Every green person, and every minute that
we speak there are more people interested in it, they will be
interested in this". They have set up a second-generation
biofuel plant in Germany, and at one of my conferences which have
consistently been supported by UK Trade & Investment, I have
to say, and we run conferences all over the world on this thing,
they said, "The first drop of second-generation biofuel from
that car will go straight to win Le Mans. We won't argue it anymore.
If we can win Le Mans with our second-generation biofuel",
this is Shell, "then we know that the public will buy it",
so within two years/two and a half years, the power of motorsport
can change the public's attitude. In fact we have a conference
in January on this very subject and in the time that the Automotive
Innovation and Growth Team has been meeting, motorsport has actually
delivered and raced hybrid electric cars, delivered and raced
fully electric motorcycles at the Isle of Man TT. We are doers
and deliverers, not visionaries, and the asset that Britain has
in having this group of doers in the world of energy efficiency
is an unbelievable asset, but we have to engage with someone who
wants to listen.
Mr Manahan: I was going to mention
quite a few of the things that Chris has just done as a test-bed,
as a test-platform and as an advert for new technologies, and
endurance racing, in particular, I think, is fantastic and I really
liked Chris's view that the most efficient use of a block of energy
wins you a race, and that is a very interesting way of putting
it as well. Going a little bit off the point or a little bit off-track
in terms of Lola, we are really a composites engineering company
that happens to make motorcars, race cars, as well as making things
like UAVs, and one green area that we have contributed to, if
I could say, is that a lot of civil aircraft now are going composite
for weight purposes and obviously a much more fuel-efficient product,
so we have the ability to work with the aerospace companies, such
as Bombardier on the C-series aircraft and hopefully some of the
other people like Boeing, in terms of manufacturing composite
product for aircraft which will be more fuel-efficient. I totally
believe in what Mike was saying, that in the future, with the
new production techniques that are coming into carbon fibre technology
and some very interesting technologies which I cannot go into
for confidential reasons that we are working with some of the
automotive OEMs, there is a very, very good possibility that future
chassis development is going to get lighter and stronger, which
is going to be fuel-efficient anyway or will certainly aid fuel
efficiency, and all of that is born from our motor-racing development
heritage.
Mr Aylett: Just 18 months ago,
because I know Lembit is a motorcycle rider, a British entrepreneur
approached us to say, "I'm going to run the world's first
zero-emission motorsport race", and I laughed at him, no
joke, I ridiculed him. Just 12 months later, they ran at the Isle
of Man TT a zero-emission Grand Prix. All British entrepreneurialism,
absolutely classic motorsport, all the rules said they could not
do it and they did it and actually they are pretty close to the
performance of a 125cc bike, which, I would just remind us, is
the world's biggest-selling category of bike to the Chinese and
the Indians, so in actual fact this British entrepreneur has at
his fingertips the chance of turning the British motorcycle industry
and becoming leaders in zero-emission motorcycles using motorsport
to sell back to the Indians and the Chinese. He entered into a
contract or an agreement with the world governing body of motorcycling
to take it and almost instantly they embraced him, put him on
a panel and have launched the World Championships. Sadly, right
now, there is now a dispute because they have decided to run a
competition against him, so British entrepreneurialism is now
being attacked by the international governing body and he needs
our help. UKTI, and I will just underline this, were the first
people in Government who put money into that project and helped
him to go around the world to go and capture the teams that delivered
the Isle of Man that zero-emission possibility of a motorcycle
industry born to sell abroad, and it is the speed, that is 18
months from someone getting the idea; pretty revolutionary.
Q220 Chairman: Your enthusiasm for
your subject has led us to go on much longer than I intended.
Mr Aylett: Sorry.
Chairman: No, I am very pleased, it is
very interesting. I think one of the questions we will ask the
Minister is: how come, if we are so brilliant in innovation in
the automotive sector in motorsport, have we got so little R&D
outside the premium brand sector and the UK for the automotive
sector in general? We are not very good at transferring these
skills across, clearly. It has been a fascinating session and
we are very grateful to you. It is frustrating that we have to
draw this to a conclusion and, if there are things you want to
tell us in writing afterwards, we would like to hear from you,
but we really do appreciate the trouble you have gone to. Thank
you very much indeed, gentlemen.
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