McLaren has released some camouflaged shots of a car that will become its first series production hybrid when it’s released next year. The company is calling it a ‘High Performance Hybrid’ (HPH) supercar, and while it won’t be the first time the company has used hybrid tech, it is the first ‘regular’ McLaren to do so, and the first phase in shifting the company in the direction of cleaner electric power.
We don’t know what it’s going to be called yet, exactly, but we do know that it’ll use the new chassis that McLaren unveiled a few weeks back. Read all about that here if you like, but in a nutshell it’s called the McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture, and it was developed and produced in-house at McLaren’s state-of-the-art tech centre in glamorous Sheffield.
It will be powered by a V6 petrol engine with two turbos – all new – and an electric motor to provide what McLaren describes as “medium range EV-only drive capability”. No range or performance stats yet, sadly, but McLaren promises that the car has “race honed agility” and “trademark McLaren track performance.” And a few extra mpgs, no doubt, which is nice.
McLaren is serious about this electrification thing. So serious that its Sport Series line – the line that includes the 540C, 570S, 600LT…basically McLaren’s job-a-day supercars – will be replaced by this HPH stuff now. So, prepare yourselves for a long of very similar looking cars with very similar names but that are definitely, like, totally different from one another. The last of the Sport Series is the 620R, below.
McLaren has made a couple of hybrids before, most notably the P1, famous not only for being the first McLaren hybrid but also because it was considered by many at the time as a successor to the legendary McLaren F1. Its use of hybrid tech was less in deference to the environment and more for outright speed, with the drivetrain combining a 727bhp V8 petrol engine with a 177bhp electric motor, good for 903bhp and a 0-62mph of 2.8 seconds. Only 375 were produced.
Of the forthcoming HRH series, McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt said the following words: “This all-new McLaren supercar is the distillation of everything we have done to date; all that we have learned and achieved… an extraordinary drivers’ car that offers blistering performance as well as an all-electric range capable of covering most urban journeys. We see this new McLaren as a true ‘next generation’ supercar and cannot wait to show it to customers.”
Keyword: McLaren releases ‘spy shots’ of 2021's hyper hybrid