Talking Business: Foreign investment heralds future growth for MIRA

AUTOMOTIVE research centre MIRA has enjoyed a strong end to the year securing a raft of new agreements, supporting its chief executive’s long-term growth plan.

Just last month it confirmed that Swedish automotive firm Haldex is to create its new European Technical Centre at the technology park, while it has also been chosen by the University of Leicester as the location of its Advanced Structural Dynamics Evaluation Centre (ASDEC).

The centre will enable the university to offer the UK’s first commercially available 3D laser structural dynamics vibration testing and analysis centre for the automotive, aerospace and space industries.

The £2.5m investment has been supported by the Government’s Regional Growth Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, and is being delivered in partnership with Polytec.

Further overseas investment is set to flow into the Nuneaton facility courtesy of Geely.

The Chinese firm, which acquired the assets of London Taxi International following the Coventry’s firm’s collapse last year, has awarded contracts worth in excess of £2m to MIRA for it to consult on the design of its new vehicle.

MIRA chief executive George Gillespie has a business plan in place to restore the strength of the MIRA brand and key to this is attracting foreign investment into the operation.

The Swedish and the Chinese are already on board, while elsewhere on the site there is a cornucopia of global automotive and engineering brands including Bosch (German), Ashok Leyland (India) and Lockheed Martin (US).

Another branch of Gillespie’s grand design is to develop the technology park as a centre of excellence for the next technology cluster – intelligent mobility.

“Intelligent mobility is all about the connective infrastructure of cars. We have Europe’s only Intelligent Mobility Test Facility. We have a series of tracks and our own 2G; 3G and wireless systems plus satellite denial to simulate driving conditions anywhere in the world,” Gillespie said during his interview as part of this year’s Talking Business series.

Intelligent mobility focuses on issues such as collision avoidance in real time, the development of new communications systems and a host of other connectivity solutions.

Analysts believe that in the next three years around 50% of new cars will have effective connectivity systems installed and MIRA is already well positioned to capitalise on this fast-growing trend.

MIRA’s George Gillespie is featured in a supplement from TheBusinessDesk.com based on our Talking Business series of interviews, carried out in partnership with KPMG. Click here to download it. 

The Chancellor said in his Autumn Statement that the Government aims to make the UK a world centre for the testing and development of driverless cars.

The proposal, drafted as part of the National Infrastructure Plan, will see Whitehall conduct a review to ensure the legislative and regulatory frameworks are in place to support this aim.   

Reporting in late 2014, the review will also create a £10m prize fund for a town or city to develop as a testing ground for driverless cars.

Gillespie said in his interview: “We have been doing research into this field for the past 20 years but only recently has this begun to commercialise.

“However, we are already producing autonomous vehicles, only these are for the military (25% of the company’s business is with the military). We supplied the first fleet of autonomous vehicles to the MoD that are being used in theatre. These driverless vehicles are doing IED detection in Afghanistan. That has been a great learning experience for us but getting that technology out there and proving that it works has been a real boost to us.

“There are civilian applications to be considered as well, such as mining, nuclear and others. Autonomous is designed for dull, dirty and dangerous tasks.

“It’s a much bigger challenge to do land-based autonomous vehicles as opposed to drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) because of the terrain changes unlike the air. It will be a long time before you see robot fighting vehicles like you do in the movies but we are moving in that direction.”