COMPANY PROFILE:

Since April 2007, the management, research, design and development staff of the two Connaught “sister” companies are based at the Technium Performance Engineering site at Llanelli, South Wales.

The Connaught Motor Company was founded in 2002 to develop the “thinking persons” four seat , sports coupe, with the emphasis on advanced, but proven technology, to achieve high performance, exceptional ride and handling, (but with high comfort levels), at the lowest possible weight.

During this design and development phase, the Connaught team reviewed various “hybridization” options for an up to the minute, new generation, high performance, motor car. However, the large, heavy weight, battery packs associated with most conventional hybrid technology are not conducive to good performance, and would negate all efforts to save weight, which is as fundamental to economy as it is to performance.

Therefore, the engineers developed the patented HYBRID+ system, which stores the regenerated (braking) energy within super capacitors, thus avoiding the weight penalty of the battery packs.

This gave rise to two motor cars; the very High Performance Connaught Type-D GT, light weight with the supercharged, all new, V10 power plant, and the High Performance Connaught Type-Dh with the same engine, normally aspirated, and the HYBRID+ system specifically tailored to maximise fuel economy, and minimize CO2 emissions.

The HYBRID+ system developed for the car proved to be so effective that a second, sister company, Connaught Engineering Ltd, was created to exploit the technology, initially for Light Commercial Vehicles (such as Transit vans) but, ultimately for other mass produced series of vehicles - taxis, buses, heavy trucks, etc. etc.

The system is to be fitted to the fleet of Tesco.com Transit vehicles from February 2008, and the Tesco/Connaught partnership were awarded an “East” award in September of this year.

Many other fleet operators and fleet leasing companies are also signed up with Connaught Engineering Ltd to fit the light weight, low cost, HYBRID+ system,
which saves fuel and reduces CO2 emissions.

Connaught currently employ 25 staff at the Technium Centre, and is continually growing to keep up with the demand for the motor car which is to be available in 2008, and for the HYBRID+ system.