Why a hybrid Ford Mustang is inevitable?

You opened your favourite automotive news portal to feed yourself with attention-worthy news pieces. You scrolled down the long list of articles and if you happen to be a diehard fan of Ford Mustang, your jaw dropped. Your heart sank. You feel like screaming 'SACRILEGIOUS!!!' at the Blue Oval thanks to the news headlines that sounds roughly like this: Ford Mustang to join the hybrid bandwagon by 2020. 

"Gasp! A muscle car brute joining the ranks of Prius?! You gotta be kidding me!", I heard you exclaiming. Well, as much it's disheartening the Mustang is going to zap its V8 with a good dose of electric power, this isn't necessarily a bad thing and in some way, necessary. Here are reasons why:

Even high-end sports car brand is going hybrid route

Hybrid technology is no longer exclusive to run-of-the-mill, fuel conscious family wagon. Ferrari is contemplating on hybridising their entire model lineup by 2019. BMW performance arm, the BMW M, is also looking to complement their M cars with hybrid technology.

If that's not enough, Mercedes and Aston Martin are dishing out their own street-legal hybrid hypercar. 

Starting with Mercedes, their performance division, AMG, has confirmed their hybrid Mercedes AMG hypercar with F1-based (yep, it's the same engine found on Lewis Hamilton and already-retired Nico Rosberg's F1 car) 1.6 litre turbocharged V6 hybrid, though reportedly it might be larger in capacity as it's not subjected to motorsport regulation.

Joining Mercedes in producing insane street-legal hybrid hypercar, Aston Martin has team up with their partner, Red Bull Racing F1 Team, to develop their own version of the Mercedes hypercar, the AM-RB 001. This monster hypercar will get its power from a naturally aspirated V12, with extra power boost from F1-derived hybrid system.

All these leads to my next point...

Hybrid tech actually improves performance potential

Combine the internal combustion engine with electric motor and you have a recipe for a potentially tyre-shredding performance. I am going to use Ferrari LaFerrari as an example. 

The Ferrari LaFerrari's 6.3 litre naturally aspirated V12 outputs around 789 bhp. Supplemented by the 161 bhp HY-KERS electric motor, the only hybrid Ferrari production supercar generates a whooping total output of 950 bhp, good for propelling it from 0-62 mph in less than 3 seconds. Thanks to the hybrid powertrain, the LaFerrari is the most powerful  road-going Ferrari the brand from Maranello has ever produced, surpassing the F12 Berlinetta (730 bhp) and F12 tdf (770 bhp).

With LaFerrari's staggering performance figure in mind, I can't think of a reason why Ford wouldn't hybridise their iconic Mustang muscle car. If hybrid has granted LaFerrari the most powerful Ferrari road car crown, surely adopting hybrid tech is going to make the Mustang even more potent than the previous iteration of the Ford's pony car.

Of course, performance is not the only reason for going the hybrid route.

We have to go green yo! Coz tighter emission standard

This is by far the most crucial reason for sports cars to go hybrid. With emission standard getting tighter, this is becoming a necessity. More and more hybrid sports cars are hitting the roads, such as BMW i8, Koenigsegg Regera, second generation Honda NSX, out-of-production McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder. These hybrid sports cars exist to give enthusiasts the performance they crave without getting under the environmentalist's skin.  

So implementing hybrid should be a win-win for the much loved Mustang. You still get a Mustang with tyre-smoking performance with lower emission to boot. Despite the benefits hybrid technology offers, there are several challenges to overcome.

The Challenges

Weight

Obviously, adding electric motor and battery pack do add weight, a complete opposite in performance enhancement. When Porsche was developing the 918 Spyder, their test driver and legendary rally champion, Walter Rohrl, was initially sceptical of it being a hybrid, as such approach will add weight (the 918 Spyder won him over eventually). 

With the current S550 Mustang weighing around 1600-1720 kg, implementing hybrid is going to make Ford's pony car weigh even more unless if they think like Koenigsegg.

Complexity

More parts, more stuff to break, higher expanses. Indeed, hybrid is one heck a complete headache-inducing piece of contraption to reap the performance and emission benefits. 

According to Mark Fitzgerald, a senior automotive analyst from a market research firm, Strategy Analytics, hybrid cars require additional components that you won't find in conventional cars such as "electric motors, electric inverters and converters, high-voltage batteries, electronic control units, semiconductors and sensors". Well, this is not entirely surprising as hybrid needs extra bits of stuff to make them function.

Conclusion

The idea of hybrid Mustang is not entirely a bad thing. Yes, there are camps that will go up in arms at the idea, but given the challenges that automakers are facing (emission being one of them), the wave of hybridisation is more or less unavoidable. All I can say is welcome to the future folks! 

         

All Ferraris to be hybridised by 2019

Source: PSParrot via wikipedia CC BY 2.0

Think of hybrid, the first thing to cross our mind is a run-of-the-mill, family-carrying grocery getter, until full-fledged supercars such as Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder and BMW i8 burst into the scene. Thanks to growingly stringent emission rules, even supercars are not exempted from the wave of hybridisation (not even race cars such as the current F1 cars). Seeing the increasing trend in hybridisation, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobile, sees it fit to hybridise all Ferraris by 2019.

Marchionne has set the aim for Ferrari to sell "in excess of 10,000 cars in 2025". To do that though, requires pairing up the engine with the electric motor to cut emission. 

Meeting low emission demand is surely not Ferrari's sole purpose of going hybrid, but to also bolster performance potential. The LaFerrari is so far the only Ferrari production car to use hybrid approach, by hooking up the 789 horsepower naturally-aspirated V12 to the 161 horsepower HY-KERS for a total output of 950 horsepower.

It is also rumoured that by 2020 the first mainstream Ferrari to receive hybrid power is the successor to the F12, as reported by Autocar.

With Ferrari planning to hybridise all models by 2019, will we see more supercar makers hybridising their entire model line-up? In my opinion, with the tightening emission regulation, it wouldn't be surprising to see the road filling up with hybrid supercars, seeing that passing the all-important emission test nowadays is every car's, supercar or not, raison d'etre.    

  

Nissan e-POWER electric drivetrain

Source: http://www.nissan.com.au/Discover/News/2016/November/02/NISSAN-INTRODUCES-NEW-ELECTRIC-MOTOR-DRIVETRAIN-ePOWER

Nissan has introduced its brand new electric drivetrain system under the Nissan Intelligent Mobility electrification strategy. Christened the e-POWER, the new electric drivetrain system is, according to Nissan, a result of knowledge gained from the development of the all-electric Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Note (pictured above) will be the first Nissan model to equip the new electric drivetrain system.

How does it work? According to Nissan, the e-POWER dispense of the need for external charging port thanks to the addition of a small petrol engine driving the power generator. The engine will fire up when the battery is low on charge. This will recharge the battery as you are driving along, which helps alleviate the so-called 'range anxiety' associated with all-electric vehicles. The battery will then feed its juice to the electric motor to propel you down the road.

This is in contrast to all-electric vehicles which does not lug around the internal combustion engine (ICE), nor the conventional hybrid where the ICE takes the propulsion duty over from the electric motor when the latter is low on charge.

Nissan's e-POWER is essentially a series hybrid system and in a way, it's nothing new. However, with the e-POWER technology, Nissan has managed to make the battery smaller compared to the Leaf's battery, which helps in weight reduction and more importantly, enables the electric motor to deliver high output for smooth, powerful acceleration.  

BMW M hybrid in the offing? Will Munich implement hybrid in spite of weight handicap?

Source: qJake via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

With the increasingly stringent emission standard and raising the environmentalists flag, the name of the game has now switched to creating greener cars: hybridity and electrification becoming increasingly inevitable.

Thanks to the likes of McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder, performance sectors are giving hybrid their graceful touch. Formula E , Porsche Mission E concept and Mercedes AMG SLS Electric Drive give performance cars some nice zap of electric shock. Hybrid and electric powertrain are not only constrained in your run-of-the-mill family cruiser, but also in muscle-bound brute that spells P.E.R.F.O.R.M.A.N.C.E.

With more and more performance marque shifting their future plan to hybridity and electrification, one marque putting their attention to it is BMW M division.

In an interview conducted by Auto Express, Dirk Hacker, vice president in the M division, admitted that hybridisation and electrification may be the future of M cars.

"We will look at electrification-I think it could be inevitable-but it depends on the possibility of increasing performance," Hacker said. He immediately noted that hybrid M will not be implemented right off the bat due to weight concern and will only consider hybrid if it offers performance improvement.

When asked on the possibility of electric M cars, Hacker dismissed the latter due to customer demand.

"We've found that our customers are not interested in driving without the combustion engine," Hacker said. "They want to know if these changes will help with performance." Seems like electric M is out of the question. Phew. This writer cannot imagine standing next to an eeriely quiet M car.

If that is the case, looks like our friend at BMW M is looking to hybridise their performance segment not in the name of efficiency but performance. The VP's concern on the weight of hybrid powertrain reminds this writer on Koenigsegg's chief concern during the development of their hallow Regera hybrid: weight.

Not surprisingly, weight is a performance killer. Shedding weight is a goal of every performance cars. Take for instance the likes of Ariel Atom 3.5R and Ferrari 458. The latter is more powerful than the former. However, the Atom sprints from 0-62 mph in just 2.6 seconds to the 458's 2.9 seconds. Wait a minute, how can the Atom with 350 hp 2 litre supercharged Honda 4 cylinders outgunned the 458 with its more powerful 562 hp 4.5 litre V8? The Atom only weighs 550 kg to the 458's 1485 kg. This emphasises in the performance realm, taking into account only power output is not enough. Power-to-weight ratio is the holy grail in making a car a speed demon. The VP's concern on hybrid drivetrain's weight may allude to boosting power-to-weight ratio.

This writer wonders if hybrid M do come into production, will the engineers at M division ponder on imitating Koenigsegg's trick in overcoming the weight handicap of their Regera hybrid: dispensing the transmission altogether. Will this be the recipe for crazy power-to-weight ratio?

A look into Regera's radical hybrid drivetrain

Source: Norbert Aepli via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0

Hybrids. With the world shifting their attention to fuel efficiency, automakers look at every nooks and cranny to meet the demands of fuel-conscious consumers. One of the alternatives is the hybrid technology, where electric power join forces with fossil fuel.

How does hybrid improve fuel efficiency? Well, hybrid cars can run on electric power only at low speed, with the internal combustion engine (ICE) kicking in at high speed, a boon for those whose life is made up of exhausting bumper-to-bumper traffic. Such is the benefit of hybrid tech that even the likes of Ferrari LaFerrari, Porsche 918 Spyder, BMW i8 and McLaren P1 are going hybrid. Thanks to hybrid tech, Porsche claims their 887 bhp 918 Spyder can do 3L/100km.

Despite that, one marque express their doubts on hybrids. The marque in question is Koenigsegg, a Swedish supercar brand.

Hybrids add weight, which makes sense due to the extra weight from the electric motor and battery pack. Koenigsegg's policy is weight reduction.

Obviously getting rid of electric motor and battery pack will not make a hybrid, so in the marque's latest hybrid model, christened the Regera, the gearbox is omitted. Yes, you heard it right, there is no multi-speed gearbox to speak off. Rather, the Regera's 5L twin turbo V8 is connected to a final drive with a roughly 2.85:1 ratio via hydraulic coupling, dubbed as Koenigsegg Direct Drive (KDD). According to Koenigsegg, the powertrain minus the gearbox only adds 88 kg. That is impressive. How does it work I heard you ask? 

Source: http://koenigsegg.com/regera/

The engine is supplemented by three electric motors, one on the crankshaft which acts as a generator and starter motor, and two on the driveshaft with one on each side. As illustrated by the above diagram, the electric power is fed by a 9kWh Liquid Cooled battery to the three electric motors. At speed below 30 mph the Regera runs on electric power alone; above 30 mph the V8 beast comes to life channelling a combined power output of roughly 1489 bhp to the rear wheels all the way up to it's 8250 rpm limit. The hydraulic coupling that sits between the engine and final drive directly connects the drive wheel and engine once above the stipulated speed. The three electric motors can fill up the 'torque gap' in the V8's rpm range where it makes less power to ensure an uninterrupted, unadulterated experience around your favourite B-roads.

Well, that's the basic overview on the Regera's innovative hybrid powertrain. Now, what does this writer think of Koenigsegg's ingenious approach? Well, part of the fun of driving is to feel the gear change. It is just natural to feel a bump signalling a change in gears. Speaking from a driving enthusiast perspective, the absence of mechanical tactility stemming from cog swapping may subjectively dilute the visceral pleasure of feeling the cogs meshing, or hearing the throttle blip on downshift. From the technological perspective though, I believe this may present an avenue for manufacturers who are head over heels on hybrid technology but wish to keep weight down to pursue alternatives on implementing hybrid technology without incurring weight penalty that may adversely compromise on the aspect of handling dynamic.