Currently reading: McLaren EV test car highlights challenges of electric supercar

McLaren engineering design director confirms that the British marque has a pure EV test mule, but that a production vehicle is some time away

McLaren has maintained its intention to build an all-electric supercar, but its engineers have been telling Autocar more about the scale of the task ahead of them.

All-electric McLaren Ultimate Series cars in development 

“We’ve got a pure EV [electric vehicle] mule and part of the reason for that is to ask how we can deliver driver engagement in a fully electric world,” said Dan Parry-Williams, McLaren’s engineering design director. “But there’s still quite a journey from here to there in terms of our products.”

The biggest issue is still battery technology. “Let’s say you want to drive on track for half an hour,” said Parry-Williams. “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.”

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The pace of change, though, is promising. “It’s definitely on the up still,” said Parry-Williams, “but which direction is it going? There’s a lot more investment going into energy-dense batteries [which are good for providing long range] rather than power density [necessary to provide supercar levels of performance].”

A full EV is still a way off, then. In the meantime, hybrid McLarens (50% of all McLarens sold by 2022 will have hybrid powertrains) will provide performance without the performance drain. “You can potentially manage [a flat battery] with a niche car,” said Parry- Williams. “If you exhaust the battery but then have to do one recharging lap, that strikes me as being okay. But if you haven’t got an on-board generator [and] you’ve got a full EV, you haven’t got the luxury of doing that.”

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Matt Prior

Matt Prior
Title: Editor-at-large

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013.

Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car. 

Into all things engineering and automotive from any era, Matt is as comfortable regularly contributing to sibling titles Move Electric and Classic & Sports Car as he is writing for Autocar. He has a racing licence, and some malfunctioning classic cars and motorbikes. 

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HHX621 21 December 2017

Porsche

Could that show.. Who will be the first one to produce a supercar? Porsche has there Mission-E pretty close to production. McLaren does not have the necissity to reach that level yet. Why not produce another fossil fuel car before have a crack at EV?

 

 

eseaton 21 December 2017

I think they're wrestling

I think they're wrestling with an idea they knew you be hideous.
Luap 21 December 2017

eseaton wrote:

eseaton wrote:

I think they're wrestling with an idea they knew you be hideous.

Umm.. What?