Electrifying McLaren: Hybrid Models By 2025, BEVs Likely To Follow
[April 24, 2020]
McLaren is one of the most authentic sports car manufacturers in the world. For decades, the company has constructed breathtaking icons and wowed with unthinkable race cars, yet most recently, McLaren has largely avoided electrification.
Not long ago, McLaren’s leadership stated that while it would pursue hybrid technologies, full battery-electric vehicles were far from the drawing board. With the outright performance potential electrification brings, however, why would McLaren be so hesitant? The answer, it turns out, has weight.
For sports cars, weight is the darkest of enemies. Sure, you can brute force certain performance with raw power. Just look at Bugatti’s Chiron Super Sport 300+, which hits 60 mph from a standstill in 2.4 seconds. An acceleration beast in its own right is the Tesla Model S Performance, boasting Bugatti-like 0-60 times. Yet another element both cars share is heft.
The Chiron is a known porker, tipping the scales at a hefty 4,400 lbs. The Model S, meanwhile, weighs some 600 lbs more than the Bugatti. Yet while you can seemingly break the laws of physics by pumping in oodles of horsepower and torque, McLaren points out that true sports cars are more than straight-line rockets.
“Reducing vehicle weight is at the center of our strategy for the next generations of McLaren supercars,” Mike Flewitt, Chief Executive Officer for McLaren Automotive, recently explained in a statement that jibed with something Christian von Koenigsegg said not too long ago. Flewitt also revealed something else about McLaren’s future: “We are already class-leading and committed to further driving down weight in order to be in the best possible position to maximize the efficiency and performance of hybridized models to be introduced by 2025.”
From its inception, the McLaren 765LT was designed to be light. Perhaps it was always intended to lead the company’s electrification charge.
Hybrids are nothing new for McLaren, although they are exceedingly rare. In 2012, McLaren unveiled its first hybrid hypercar, the P1, with all 375 units selling out by the time the car’s production wrapped in 2015. Some 34% of P1s sold in the US. But with the exception of the P1 and the barely-just-released, not-U.S.-legal, ultra rare, and mega expensive Speedtail that basically utilizes P1 hybrid components and is all but a proof of concept, McLaren has stuck to its ICE roots. Or, as the case may be, has the company actually been setting the stage for a reentry into the “mainstream” hybrid supercar segment, with tricks up its sleeve even beyond that?
“Vehicle mass is the enemy of performance whether a car has a conventional internal combustion engine or a fully electrified powertrain, so winning the weight race is an absolute priority for us – and one of the reasons McLaren Automotive has invested heavily in the McLaren Composites Technology Centre, our own UK composite materials innovation and production facility,” Flewitt said.
The McLaren P1 hybrid tipped the scales at an acceptable 3,400 lbs, with the hybrid Speedtail measuring a hair over 3,150 lbs. Meanwhile, McLaren’s brand-spanking-new 2021 765LT ICE-powered supercar weighs in at an emaciated 2,700 lbs (think Toyota 86, but lighter and with 600 more horsepower), allowing this featherweight to lay the groundwork for exciting, mainstream lightweight hybrid McLaren supercars to come.
Lightweight designs don’t happen by accident. Modern McLarens utilize carbon fiber, well, everywhere. And there’s little reason to believe future hybrid or BEV McLarens would waiver from that equation.
Let’s toss in another data point: The second generation Acura NSX. Sporting a twin-turbocharged 3.5L V6 and three electric motors, Acura’s all-wheel-drive hybrid supercar hits 60 mph in 2.7 seconds, but it also weighs nearly 3,900 lbs. With its strict Weight Watchers regime, McLaren stands to produce a high production (for McLaren) hybrid hypercar that's well over a quarter-ton lighter than its hybrid competition.
Where will the yet-to-be-released electric Tesla Roadster enter the equation? Tesla will undoubtedly win the acceleration game, possibly hitting 60 mph in a bind-blowing 1.9 seconds, but weight will, once again, be an issue.
“The Tesla Roadster will be the fastest production car ever made – period,” Tesla boss Elon Musk boasted during the Roadster’s unveiling in November 2017. But the term “fastest” was used loosely, as Musk only bragged about straight-line speed in this regard. The Roadster’s 200 kWh battery alone will likely be a beefy 1,800-2,000 lbs, and considering Musk never mentioned weight, the scales probably won’t be kind to the Roadster – although it undoubtedly will weigh less than the Model S.
“The point of doing this [building the Tesla Roadster] is to give a hardcore smack-down to gasoline cars,” Musk said in 2017 of the Roadster’s performance. Yet the smack down will likely only occur in a line. It’s the braking zones and corners that McLaren’s advantage lie.
The P1 was McLaren’s first step into the hybrid hypercar world – and it won’t be the last.
To that end, McLaren also revealed a lot in a recent statement, with a game-changing kicker coming as the company’s one more thing: “Mike Flewitt, McLaren Automotive Chief Executive Officer, has confirmed that the company will continue to pursue its engineering philosophy of reducing vehicle weight to further enhance the performance and efficiency of its supercars. Already evident in existing models such as the new 765LT, the ongoing drive for weight reduction will put McLaren in the best possible position to embrace powertrain advances such as hybridization and electrification.”
None of this should come as a surprise, though, as the McLaren Group also owns McLaren Applied Technologies, which is the sole battery supplier for the all-electric formula racing series ABB Formula E.
There are apples, oranges, and the periodic pear in this analysis – hybrid, electric, and ICE supercars have been heaped into one delicious pile. Yet the point is simple: McLaren, an iconic supercar manufacturer known for rule-breaking designs that dance on light feet, is set to electrify in both hybrid and full-electric forms, and everyone – from Tesla to Acura – should be worried.
(Images courtesy McLaren)
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