The Royal Automobile Club is delighted to launch and promote the RAC Future Car Challenge, an annual event designed to demonstrate, promote and challenge the development of new-energy and related technology for tomorrow's motoring.

 

Since its creation in 1897, The Royal Automobile Club has actively supported and promoted the development of motoring in Great Britain including the introduction of the famous 1000 Mile Trial of 1900; the first motor race (the Tourist Trophy) in 1905; the first British Grand Prix in 1926 and since 1930 the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run (LBVCR). This celebrates the Emancipation Run of November 1896, an historic event that promoted and demonstrated the then recently invented 'horseless carriage' at a time when electric and steam power, as well as the internal combustion engine, were competing for mass-production dominance.

 

Today's new-energy and related technologies for low/zero emission motoring is arguably the most significant motoring challenge since those early pioneering days. What better opportunity could we have to demonstrate this new range of technologies than on the day before the annual LBVCR over the universally recognised 60 mile route between London and Brighton, finishing in front of an estimated 250,000 crowd in London's Regent Street?

 

Today, we would like to invite producers and engineers of new-energy motor vehicles to enter this new motoring challenge to demonstrate and promote their future motoring products to the wider public, just as the pioneers of those first horseless carriages did back in November 1896. To those achieving the lowest energy use in category we will present Royal Automobile Club trophies and to the overall winner, the coveted Royal Automobile Club RAC Future Car Challenge Winners trophy.

 

I do hope you will join us, and I look forward to welcoming you to this year's RAC Future Car Challenge on Saturday 5 November 2011.