COVID-19: McLaren joins consortium to expedite ventilator production

The McLaren Group, comprising McLaren Automotive, McLaren Racing (Formula 1) and McLaren Applied (data and electronics), has joined the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium to help produce more medical ventilators for the UK during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium is a group of major industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors.

McLaren will employ its expertise in design, rapid prototyping, electronics and manufacturing to support the consortium's production goal of ventilators to help treat coronavirus patients.

McLaren Automotive has designed and crash tested lightweight, bespoke trolleys on which the ventilators are fixed for use in clinical settings.

It is also helping to duplicate and expand the production of existing devices to meet demand by reverse engineering and building more vital test boxes to validate new ventilators

These are being hand-built in the same McLaren laboratory where supercar prototypes are usually created.

McLaren Applied is supporting the ventilator device build assessments, in particular around electronics, and is working with McLaren Automotive to provide engineering expertise to design and build 'end of line' test equipment, ensuring that the ventilator units meet all of the functional and safety requirements.