McLaren Is Officially Testing An All-Electric Supercar, But It Won't Hit Production For A While
It’s official: McLaren is indeed testing an all-electric supercar. Try not to act shocked.
McLaren’s very first EV has - after all - been rumoured for ages, but this is the first time the company has gone on record about what it’s up to in the electricity department.
“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,” McLaren Design Director Dan Parry-Williams told Autocar. It will however be a while before a McLaren powered by electricity alone arrives in showrooms, mostly due to current limitations with battery technology.
“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 EV range (for road driving), 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,” Parry-Williams said.
Battery tech is of course developing at an extremely fast pace, but that might not necessarily help McLaren in its quest to make an electric hypercar as much as you’d think. “There’s a lot more investment going into energy-dense batteries rather than power density,” Parry-Williams explained. The former is more about range - it’s big strides forward for the latter that McLaren really needs for its super-fast EV.
So make no mistake, the first electric-only McLaren is coming. Just don’t expect to see it for a little while.
Comments
“Try not to act shocked.” That’s a very annoying but slightly clever pun.
Quite punny isn’t it.
I know I will get hated for this, but I don’t see ICE in the Supercar world for much longer. Sports cars? Defenetly. Sports cars are about driving enjoyment. Supercars? Speed. And ICE can’t hold on much longer
I agree! There’ll be a breakthrough with the electric motor that will render the ICE obsolete in the pursuit of speed.
I disagree. Supercars are now very much about driving experience. Sure, there are some extreme raw-performance cars, but there is always a tradeoff between numerous factors (performance, appearance, luxury, experience, cost). I think the ICE will remain in the majority of supercars, but in 10 years time, all the track-focused all-out stuff (like the Project One, Valkyrie or Senna) will be electric. But even then, those cars do have an experience element. For example, I’m sure the Valkyrie could be quicker if it had a turbo engine, but it’s N/A for enjoyment and the sound of an 11kRPM V12.
Electric cars have major challenges with cooling. Even though they are more efficient and produce less heat than ICEs, their batteries are very dense and quite difficult to cool. the Mclaren P1 and Porsche 918 already have issues cooling their electric systems and they rely primarily on their gasoline engines for performance. An all electric hypercar will be fast for a very short period of time but then it will be severely limited. With this upcoming round of hypercars (Mclaren Senna, AMG Project One, Aston Martin Valkyrie) being all extremely focused on track use, I doubt that an all electric hypercar will be acceptable. when they finally overcome these challenges i suspect hypercars will stay as hybrids.
In this case, all of us around now would have seen the death of the ICE supercar…I suppose this is a good example of technological advance-the more tech comes out, the faster it develops. That cycle repeats itself until the next big thing-and in this case, it’s electric vehicles.
I think with an engine that has a very high compression ratio like in Mazda’s new technology and Koenigsegg’s Freevalve tech ICE have a lot more potential and wont be extict that quick
What about this one?
Yes we all saw the picture in the article too thank you
Am I the only one trying to earn enough money as fast as possible to buy a supercar before they all become electric?
Every time there are news saying that EV supercars won’t be here for a while I’m actually happy as it gives me more time
Just buy a second hand one, it’s not as if they’ll disappear…
You right, well I don’t care about supercars but I would like to have fun with some cool cars like 350Z, some V8,V10 and V12 cars until I still can. Just the problem (at least for UK) is that you can drive fu*king 1.0 fiestas and cannot have too much fun, as they are set to be “confy” and as fuel/ eco friendly as possible, that means no any sporty feel.
IF I will stay in UK, I have to wait like 3 years just to afford SOMETHING with more than 130HP 😭
Well it’s not bad to give slow car to rookie but c’on I could at least have some (decent) choice in car I will drive like Celica or something.
They could use electric golf carts and stick a McLaren badge on it.
I guess that’s one way to do it!
Take a P1 and remove the v8
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