McLaren, like all automakers, is beginning to work on electrifying its range of supercars. The company will follow in the footsteps of Porsche, which launched its Taycan EV in 2020, with an electric sedan of its own that’s predicted to break cover in the coming years.
In an interview with Autocar, McLaren boss Michael Leiters said that EVs were one of three streams that the company was investigating, including new ICE models as well as hybrid cars. Over the next five years, McLaren says hybrids will grow to make up 90 percent of sales, and the company launched its latest hybrid model, the Artura, last year. However, there isn’t yet an all-electric McLaren on sale.
That is set to change with the premiere of an electric sedan, but the company known for record-breaking hypercars isn’t going to stop with some practical family hauler, oh no. According to Autocar, the historic company has much more exciting plans up its sleeves.
In fact, Autocar reports that McLaren is working on a battery-powered successor to its flagship P1 and F1 hypercars, which each went on sale in 2013 and 1992 respectively. The move would follow Porsche’s own work on an electric hypercar, with the Mission X concept set to revive the formula for the company’s 918 hybrid hypercar.
There will be a few strict requirements for McLaren’s entry into the electric hypercar race. Namely, the company is worried about the weight of its potential future flagship, as Autocar reports:
As it stands, Leiters said the firm was “not sure” on electric supercars.
“The main reason for that is weight. We don’t want to make a car that is 2,000kg and 2,000hp – anybody can do that. That’s not in the DNA of McLaren.
“We want to make a car that is comparable to the 750 weight-wise; we don’t need 2000hp. We’re working on concepts for that, we’re exploring that and we have really exciting ideas around that. But it has to outperform what we do on an ICE.”
Before McLaren can fully back electric tech as the future of its cars, Leiters is hoping for a “technology change for EVs,” according to Autocar. This means that their capabilities need to improve, in order to help keep weight down and they need to be more “exciting to drive,” in order for them to seamlessly fit “within the brand’s DNA,” the site reports.
Once the technology has been developed to McLaren’s standards, Leiters says that the best way to introduce the switch would be from the “top down,” which could mean that an electric flagship hypercar is in the works. However, it won’t be breaking cover anytime soon.
Because of the development needed before McLaren can strap a battery pack into something like the P1, it isn’t expecting this new electric flagship to come around anytime soon. In fact, Leiters expects such an electric car won’t be ready until “maybe at the end of the decade.”
