McLaren aren’t ditching the idea of developing a zero-emission hypercar, but the road to get there is very demanding and the current battery technology isn’t helping them, either.
Nevertheless, Woking has an all-electric mule out there, as confirmed to Autocar by the company’s engineering design director Dan Parry-Williams.
“We’ve got a pure EV mule, and part of the reason for that is to ask how we can deliver driver engagement in a fully electric world. But there’s still quite a journey from here to there, in terms of our products”, Parry-Williams said.
The McLaren exec added that, despite the investment made “into energy-dense batteries rather than power density”, the current technology remains the biggest challenge when developing a high-performance electric vehicle.
“Let’s say you want to drive on track for half an hour. If that was an EV, that car would have over 500 miles of (road) EV range, and it would be flat as a pancake at the end. The energy required to do really high performance on track is staggering. And then you have to recharge it”, he added.
As a result, a fully electric McLaren is still somewhere in the future. Nevertheless, the automaker will launch electrified models, in accordance with their ‘Track 22’ business plan that calls for half of their cars to utilize a hybrid powertrain by 2022.
Note: McLaren P1 pictured
PHOTO GALLERY
