It’s official: McLaren is finally going to offer something other than a 3.8 or 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8. We were pretty sure already that a hybrid V6 was on the way, but now Woking has confirmed its incoming part-electric supercar.
We’ve seen the 570S-replacing car undergoing testing a few times, and now we have a reasonably revealing teaser to dissect. As we’d already gathered from the test mule, there are some GT vibes at the rear plus a hint of 720S at the front. It’ll be sandwiched between those two cars in the range, and act as an indirect replacement for the Sports Series cars (that’s the likes of the 570S and 570GT), which will soon be discontinued.
Mounted in the middle will be a turbocharged V6 built by Ricardo – the same company responsible for the production of McLaren’s V8s. At the car’s core is the new McLaren Lightweight Carbon Architecture, which has been designed with electrification in mind. The new tub replaces the Monocell tub and its Monocage offshoot and will be built at the £50 million McLaren Composites Technology Centre in Sheffield.
The new architecture is lighter, which – along with the drop in cylinder count and McLaren’s general obsession with weight reduction – should ensure this is a lot lighter than the average hybrid supercar.
A fully electric car is still on the agenda for McLaren, too – the company has confirmed it’s assessing a battery pack that can deliver up to 30 minutes of high-speed track driving.
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