McLaren takes hybrid approach to super EVs
Ferrari’s first EV has been spotted in testing, Lamborghini says it is working “full throttle” on one of its own, but at British dream-car maker McLaren, a fully electric super car has been pushed to the back of the garage, due to “lack of demand”.
Mirroring the supposed shift in the market elsewhere, McLaren is focusing on hybrid technology instead and recently launched the new version of its Artura Spider in Australia, which can whisper its way out of your driveway in EV mode at dawn and drive a whole 31km before its twin-turbo V6 engine kicks in to turn your spine to dust.
Speaking at the launch, Charlotte Dickson, McLaren’s regional director Asia Pacific, said that her brand would not be hurrying into the EV space.
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“We’re certainly not seeing a demand from our customers for a pure EV, and the Artura hybrid option is doing extremely well for us in Asia Pacific, especially with the launch of the Spider,” Dickson explained.
“In markets like Thailand and Vietnam, they even have a hybrid tax benefit. In Thailand, normal super car tax is about 300 per cent, but if you buy a hybrid, it’s about 150 per cent.
“It’s an interesting one because a couple of years ago it seemed like hybrid was the way forward but everyone was talking about going from that to full electric, but then as people have started doing fully electric cars, there doesn’t seem to be the demand there that we thought there was going to be previously.
“If you take Rolls-Royce, for example, with their Spectre EV, from what I understand, in a lot of the Asian markets, the demand just is not there for that product. There’s just not the order bank they were expecting.”
There does seem to be an acceptance at McLaren that a fully electric future is inevitable, although small-volume super car makers are hoping for exceptions that will allow them to sell small numbers of wildly irresponsible petrol-powered cars for a while yet.
When the dinosaurs fall silent, however, and even super cars have to be electric, McLaren will be ready, and it’s not far off showing at least its concept for a super EV, Dickson explained.
“Rather than doing it as a series car that we sell openly, it might be that we do an EV as a kind of test vehicle, a one-off, not even something we would let the media drive, just a kind of proof of concept,” she said.
“It’s an interesting one, I still think at the moment hybrid is the way forward, because you can do it light weight, you can still deliver the performance, and that’s what McLaren is all about.
“A fully electric McLaren at this point in time I think would lack the core DNA that we want to maintain. It’s got to be fast, it’s got to be lightweight, you’ve got to have that real exhilaration of driving.”
