H ΜcLaren σήμερα έκανε τα εγκαίνια του νέου της εργοστασίου McLaren Production Centre και παρόν ήταν ο πρωθυπουργός της Αγγλίας, David Cameron. Η McLaren θα κατασκευάζει εκεί τόσο τα αυτοκίνητα παραγωγής με στόχο τις 4.500 πωλήσεις ετησίως έως το 2014, αλλά και τα μονοθέσια της Formula 1. Επίσης έχει κατασκευαστεί και νέα αεροδυναμική σήραγγα. Περισσότερες λεπτομέρειες μπορείς να βρεις στις απολαυστικές φωτογραφίες, στα video και στο δελτίο τύπου που ακολουθεί.
[Πηγή: McLaren]
[learn_more caption=”Δελτίο Τύπου”]
UK PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON VISITS McLAREN TO OPEN BRAND-NEW McLAREN PRODUCTION CENTRE
Ron Dennis (Executive Chairman, McLaren Group and McLaren Automotive) outlines McLaren’s ambitions for 2012 and beyond
Just like our racing cars, the McLaren Group never stands still – and you may like some of the pioneering new directions we’re taking.
McLaren is more than just a builder of beautiful and successful Formula 1 cars: we’re a relentlessly competitive entity, bred on high-performance and determined to bring to market ground-breaking products and solutions that are set apart by their top quality and dependence on totally unique and highly innovative steps in performance.
To take just one example, we’re poised on the verge of a hugely exciting automotive programme with our high-performance sports car, MP4-12C.
And today’s visit to McLaren by Prime Minister the Rt Hon David Cameron MP is a statement of intent: that we’re committed to building a homegrown sports car manufacturer to take on the likes of Europe’s and North America’s giants.
But that’s not all.
Through everything we do, we’re absolutely dedicated to fostering the rebirth of one of Great Britain’s industrial cornerstones: beautiful and meticulously crafted high-tech industrial design and manufacture.
Design and manufacturing have been at the backbone of British industry for more than 100 years, and are activities that we as a company not only passionately believe in, but consider of primary importance to the future economic growth and recovery of the United Kingdom.
It’s a philosophy that is at the cornerstone of McLaren Group chairman Ron Dennis’s view for the future of the Group.
He said:
“Through everything we do, McLaren strives to find the solution.
“We never stop. We exist to go faster; to be state-of-the-art; to innovate; to perform with belief, flair and passion; to be the absolute best at what we do. And everything that McLaren is has been built on the founding principles of good design and solid, seamlessly efficient engineering and manufacturing.
“Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, great minds such as George Stephenson, James Watt, Matthew Boulton and Isambard Kingdom Brunel have brought tremendous and justified acclaim to Great Britain via their relentless innovation and restless desire to deliver societal benefit.
“But, in the UK, there has been an over-reliance in the past on the financial and service sectors. Now, industry is realising that Britain’s grand manufacturing tradition is a solid platform upon which to build – and I want the McLaren Group to play its part in the crucial recalibration of UK plc.
“I’m delighted that the Government is embracing that initiative too: we need to encourage young people to embrace the STEM subjects, by which I mean, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“This should not trigger the abandonment of the arts – of which I am also a keen patron. However, I firmly believe it is the role and duty of British industry to offer STEM graduates the appropriate destination jobs – the provision of a worthwhile career path that ensures that our brightest scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians aren’t lured into finance or banking – simply because they feel that engineering cannot compete to offer equal satisfaction or reward.”
As Ron Dennis’s words make apparent: our vision is clear, and the means by which we achieve it are rich and diverse. We are proud that McLaren is a British industrial icon, but there is more to us than you may imagine…
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
The historic cornerstone of our business, a household name within the UK and one of the most prestigious brands in world sport. With 175 grand prix wins and 20 world titles achieved by a roster of talent, including our world champions – Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton – our Formula 1 team has rightfully become one of the most famous and established in the history of the sport.
- 702 grands prix, 175 grand prix victories
- 12 drivers’ championships & eight constructors’ championships
- Six grand prix victories so far in 2011 with our drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button
You might be surprised at what we’re doing next:
- Completing a four-day technical test in Abu Dhabi with Gary Paffett and Oliver Turvey
- Freighting spares and chassis to Brazil for the final race of the 2011 season in Sao Paulo
- Preparing build-work on next year’s car, MP4-27 – we are nine months into the development programme and have already stored 18,918 individual components from more than 3,000 different works orders and signed off more than 5,500 technical drawings.
For more information, go to www.mclaren.com/formula1
McLaren Automotive
In the past decade, McLaren Automotive has become a ground-breaking British automotive powerhouse that is successfully taking on the giants of the European, Asian and North American sports car market. McLaren Automotive intends to become renowned not only as a premium automotive brand, but also as a high-volume high-performance sports car manufacturer with the presence and range to co-exist and compete with the most established supercar brands in the world.
- The creation of what was then the world’s fastest ever production car, the 1994 McLaren F1
- Manufacturing and assembly-line expertise with the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren
- Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren becomes world’s highest-volume 200mph-plus high-performance sports car – 2,153 units built
- MP4-12C – the world’s most advanced high-performance sports car – is launched in 2011
- MP4-12C is hailed by critics as “the most complete supercar the world has ever seen” (CAR magazine) and “the most capable supercar on the planet right now” (Pistonheads)
What we’re doing next:
- Officially opening the Foster + Partners-designed McLaren Production Centre
- Rolling out 35 global dealerships between now and the end of 2012
- Preparing our works and customer GT3 racecar operations for their first full season of competition in 2012
- Working on the design of a range of game-changing high-performance production cars whose launch will take our annual production to 4,500 cars per year by 2014
For more information, go to www.mclarenautomotive.com
McLaren Applied Technologies
McLaren Applied Technologies successfully mines the rich seam of accumulated knowledge within the Group to resolve a diverse and fascinating series of third-party technical projects and collaborations. Recent projects have capitalised on our unique expertise in applying simulation, modelling and telemetry to achieve greater performance, used our technical and strategic know-how within the sporting world or simply harnessed our world-class understanding of carbon-fibre.
- Successfully collaborated with National Air Traffic Services to improve ground-level air traffic efficiency for airports, including Heathrow
- Providing telemetry and engineering design assistance to five British Olympic teams: canoeing, cycling, rowing, sailing and winter sports
- Providing telemetry and data management to professional football and RFU teams
- Collaborated with bicycle manufacturer Specialized to provide carbon-fibre lay-up expertise for the S-Works + McLaren Venge – the bike that took of Mark Cavendish to the Tour de France’s green jersey and the road race world championship
- Working with GlaxoSmithKline to develop software to improve the time-to-market of new pharmaceutical products, among other high-tech collaborations
- Pioneering human telemetry for health and wellness – already applied to executives in high-performance positions and also for weight-management
- Created the McLaren High-Performance Centre – a simulation and training tool for racing drivers and engineers
What we’re doing next:
- Planning permission submitted for the McLaren Applied Technologies Centre – to be built on ground adjacent to McLaren Group’s current premises
- Commencing specification and design of the new McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance – an engineering centre of excellence
- Kicking off a new five-year deal with Specialized for development of the new top-of-the-range S-Works SL4 carbon-fibre road bike
- Working with marine competition teams
For more information, go to www.mclarenappliedtechnologies.com
McLaren Electronic Systems
With more than two decades’ experience on the racetrack, and with centres in Woking, UK and North Carolina, USA, McLaren Electronic Systems has grown into professional motor racing’s leading supplier of electronic control and data systems. Honed in some of the most hostile and competitive environments in world sport, McLaren Electronic Systems has continued to develop a series of technical solutions that sit at the cutting-edge of technical know-how while remaining user-friendly and mechanically bullet-proof.
- A software pioneer within motorsport since the company first raced at Le Mans in 1991
- Complete electronic control systems in Formula One since 1993
- Sole provider of engine control units to the IndyCar series since 2007
- Official supplier of engine control units to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship since 2008
- Official engine control unit of NASCAR from 2012, provoking the biggest single change to the engine in 60 years
- Winner of Queen’s Award for Innovation in 2009
What we’re doing next:
- Official supplier of master control units for Formula 1’s new 2014 powertrain
- Developing and manufacturing advanced automotive control systems and powertrain solutions for high performance road cars
- Supplying engine control units for piston-engine aircraft engines
- Providing data and video systems for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco
- Developing data and telemetry systems, based on Formula 1 experience and technology, for use in acute paediatric care (in collaboration with Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Health Foundation and Vodafone)
- Exploiting real-time data systems from Formula 1 in large sensor network solutions (‘machine-to-machine’ or M2M applications)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron visits McLaren to open brand-new McLaren Production Centre
Ron Dennis and Prime Minister David Cameron transcription
Ron Dennis:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to McLaren. I say “ladies and gentlemen”, because that’s the polite convention but, more importantly, you’re all policy makers, industry leaders, influencers and opinion-formers. Welcome to you all.
Prime Minister, thank you, especially, for taking the time to join us here today.
We appreciate your visit very much, since it clearly demonstrates your commitment to our industry – an industry which, we know, sits at the very heart of your declared strategy to rebalance the UK economy. And I’m sure all of us here today, whether we be policy makers or industry leaders, support that strategy. Certainly, McLaren intends to contribute to it.
McLaren comprises a group of companies, all of them based here on this corporate campus in Woking and all of them sharing a common culture, but with different technological disciplines and therefore different business objectives.
Yet they all share the ambition to be the best, the ambition to win. Ambition is the driving force of entrepreneurship, which the Government is keen to facilitate and foster. It’s a vision shared by all McLaren’s shareholders.
Without their investment in the UK, and more specifically in McLaren Automotive, we wouldn’t be sitting here today. It’s a vision also shared by everyone at McLaren, whether they be directors, or apprentices, or anyone in between.
But we’re here today, above all, to celebrate the formal opening of the McLaren Production Centre, the new home of McLaren Automotive, which sits behind me across the lake and which the Prime Minister has just toured.
McLaren Automotive has recently launched a high-performance sports car, the McLaren MP4-12C, which has already attracted outstanding reviews. We’ve already pre-sold almost 2000 cars, and we’re proud that they’re being designed, developed and manufactured right here in Woking.
McLaren is a very successful motor racing organisation which has won 20 Formula 1 world championships and 175 Formula 1 races – a total which equates to one in every four races that we’ve contested since 1966. We’ve also won the famous Indianapolis 500 race three times and the iconic Le Mans 24 Hours race at our first attempt.
But McLaren will always be a Formula 1 team and Formula 1 will always be a core part of McLaren’s business.
When the international motor racing season kicks off early next year, another McLaren company, McLaren Electronic Systems, will be in a unique position. Because every single car in the world’s three premier motor racing series – in other words every single car in Formula 1, every single car in the IndyCar series and every single car in the most popular and successful racing series in the United States, NASCAR – will all be using engine control units made here in Woking. McLaren Electronic Systems is the world leader in the field of automotive electronic control systems for motorsport.
But McLaren isn’t only about racing cars and sports cars.
Because we’re now seeing very exciting developments from McLaren Applied Technologies, which has grown rapidly and profitably over the past few years.
McLaren Applied Technologies develops motorsport-honed technologies for alternative applications, taking McLaren’s technological knowhow into areas that no Formula 1 team has ever been to before. The British cyclist Mark Cavendish, who’s here today, became a world champion this year on a Specialized road bike that was developed by McLaren Applied Technologies.
We’re working with the British Olympic Association on a number of sports and a number of British Olympians will therefore benefit from McLaren Applied Technologies during London 2012. And for National Air Traffic Services, we’ve developed a system that simulates aircraft ground movements in British airports, including Heathrow.
I could, I assure you, go on.
But why is McLaren doing all this? We’re doing all this because we’re committed to growth. Which is good news for the local community. Good news for jobs. Good news for exports. And good news for UK plc.
As I’ve said, the Prime Minister has recently spoken about promoting entrepreneur-ship and rebalancing the UK economy. We at McLaren believe passionately in the importance of making things, of manufacturing high-tech, state-of-the-art, premium products.
We very much support the Prime Minister’s desire to rebalance the UK economy.
Over the past 20 years, manufacturing as a percentage of the UK economy fell from just over 18 per cent in 1990 to 11 per cent in 2009. Recent figures have shown small but encouraging signs of improvement but we must all work to arrest the wider decline. And that’s why McLaren aims to do its bit to support the rebalancing of the UK economy that I’ve just described and, in so doing, we intend to tap in to what is in fact a far more robust tradition, a far grander tradition, than we’ve seen in recent years, with over-reliance on financial and service industries. McLaren is, I hope, a dynamic and entrepreneurial force for good committed to designing and manufacturing high-tech, state-of-the-art, premium products. And, as I say, that’s a robust tradition, a grand tradition, which is why I was encouraged to see that where the old £50 note used to carry an image of Sir John Houblon, a banker, the new £50 note carries images of James Watt and Matthew Boulton – two of the greatest figures in the industrial history of Great Britain whose famous company, Boulton & Watt, engineered and manufactured state-of-the-art steam engines throughout the 19th century.
I regard this new £50 note as a small but nevertheless clear indication that manufacturing and engineering are being recognised and prioritised by this Government and I hope that this Government will continue to remove the barriers that hamper British companies’ ability to grow and incentivise British companies to be successful in the future.
At McLaren we’re fully supportive of the move to encourage STEM in our schools and colleges – in other words, science, technology, engineering and mathematics and that’s why McLaren has been a pioneer of the Government’s ‘See Inside Manufacturing’ initiative which has encouraged schoolchildren, including children here in Woking, to come to McLaren to see and be inspired by what they can achieve if they study STEM subjects at school. In fact we’re particularly proud to welcome here today the boys and girls from Woking College who were the winners of the recent McLaren Manufacturing Challenge, which was part of the Government’s ‘See Inside Manufacturing’ initiative and we regard their achievement as a fantastic example of what can be accomplished by young people, in the STEM subjects, through ambition, dedication and teamwork.
And that’s the key word – teamwork. Because, inspired by steadfast shareholder support, intelligent and focused management and a talented and dedicated workforce, together, we’re daring to try.
And as a result of this unwavering effort, supported by the Government, we hope to inspire the scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians of the future to dare to try too. Thank you.
Prime Minister David Cameron:
”When I come here and see what you’re doing here it’s a great reminder that actually in Britain we do still have world class engineering, world class manufacturing, world class production techniques.
”I’ve been to a few factories, a few car manufacturing plants in my time – I’ve never been to anything quite like this. It really is inspiring what you do.
“We all want this to be a country where we are respected again for what we make as well as the services and finance we provide, vital though they are. There are people out there who say it can’t happen because the base has gone, the skills aren’t there, Britain doesn’t make enough things any more on which to build. So they conclude our glory days of science, engineering and manufacturing are behind us, and from now on it’s going to be about buying from the world rather than selling to the world.
“What McLaren does here in Woking is a powerful rebuke to that view. One of the things that so impressed me is it is not just about the extraordinary Formula One cars you make, or indeed the incredible new cars we’ve been looking at. It’s the technology, the invention, the patents, it’s all of that intellectual property that is going to lead to so many other great businesses in the future.”
“There is something that is not said often enough, but Formula One is an incredible British success story. It’s not just every time Jenson or Lewis crosses the winning line.”But every time Schumacher or Barrichello roars off the starting grid, they are doing so in cars built right here in Britain.
“Engineering does not get more complex than this – tens of thousands of components, aerodynamics that almost defy the laws of physics, cars that go from 0-300kmh in less than nine seconds.
“This team designs a new part for a car every 20 minutes across the season, that’s how fast the innovation is.
“It’s engineering so ground-breaking that when space scientists are looking for ideas they come to the brains in Formula One.
“You remember Beagle 2 – it was encased in a lightweight plastic first developed for Formula One exhaust systems.
“We can be proud British engineering is not just dominating Formula One, but actually changing the world.”
“I don’t for one second underestimate the difficulties ahead of us, but at the same time we have to be alive to the hope that is out there,”
“It’s about the growing strength of our car industry, the genius of our engineers, the genuine drive of our young people and apprentices – I’ve seen all of those things today.
“It’s visits to places like this that make me optimistic about the future, even in the difficult times we face.
“This country has the talent, the ideas, the expertise to create and to sell more to the rest of the world.
“It has a Government that is determined to capitalise on the opportunities out there, determined to invest in entrepreneurship and success.
“I am confident with all the difficulties we face, we can ride out the storm that is taking place in Europe.
“Over time we can come through it in a way that we are much stronger, showing the world Britain is back making things, back open for business.”
[/learn_more]