Truly driven women
WOMEN are not just in the driving seat when it comes to buying cars, they are increasingly designing the high-tech vehicles that you and I will be driving tomorrow. In engineering, manufacturing, testing, marketing and selling, as well as, increasingly, running car companies, women are making giant strides.
They are responsible for making half of all new car purchases and play a role in 80 per cent.
But there’s still a long way to go as only 3 per cent of dealer principals and about one in eight showroom staff is female. So work is needed to get more breaking into a still maledominated industry.
But this week I had the privilege of being a rare male in the company of 100 Great British Women in the UK motor industry — at an event to recognise rising stars set to become tomorrow’s movers and shakers. Overall winner was autonomous vehicle engineer Dr Amy Rimmer, 29, who is helping to drive Jaguar Land Rover’s quest towards building self-driving cars — part of a £20million three-year research and development project involving trials on public roads around Milton Keynes and Coventry later this year.
She also won her category for vehicle development.
Just married Cambridge graduate Dr Rimmer, from King’s Lynn, gained a masters in mechanical engineering in 2010 after working as an intern at the McLaren F1 team’s vehicle dynamics department.
Her PhD in vehicle dynamics, also from Cambridge, led to work with Volvo Trucks on autonomous driving, before she joined JLR as a research engineer.
She said: ‘My experience of being a woman in the engineering industry has been really positive. It’s a great industry to be in with all the emerging technologies coming out so it should appeal to any engineer.’
Autocar’s Rising Stars awards are backed by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and were announced this week at a conference of women motor industry executives at Twickenham Stadium, South-West London.
Out of the top 100 women, 21 were from JLR, 13 from Ford, and 12 from the Volkswagen Group, which includes VW, Audi, Bentley and Skoda.