NOW YOU’RE TORQUING
Packing close to 500hp, the petrolelectric Peugeot 308 R Hybrid could herald an exciting new chapter for hot hatches
Plug-in hybrid powertrain technology is flooding into the performance car market as all advanced technologies tend to: from the top down. It has transformed the modern hypercar into something we wouldn’t have recognised 20 years ago, and has left a big impression on the sports car scene in the outlandish shape of the BMW i8.
And while the lukewarm Volkswagen Golf GTE has already given it an outing of a sort among hot hatches, its debut is nothing compared with what Peugeot is plotting: a 500hp, four-wheel-drive mega-hatch capable of acceleration and responsiveness unmatched in the class.
The R Hybrid, driven here in prototype form, draws its primary motive power from Peugeot Sport’s 270hp 1.6-litre turbo four, but it also carries 200kg of ballast in the form of 120hp electric motor for each axle and lithium-ion battery. Unlike in other performance hybrids, the 308’s front electric motor drives straight into the Torsen limited-slip front differential, bypassing Peugeot’s six-speed automated manual gearbox entirely. Both front and rear electric motors transfer their power via single-speed reduction gearing.
The 308 GTi’s suspension has had the kind of fettling you’d expect in order to cope with all that grunt (a combined 500hp and 730Nm, if you can believe it). So the R Hybrid’s axle tracks are 80mm wider than the GTi’s, while its front suspension has been entirely redesigned, with new struts, mounting points and wheel angles employed.
Its springs, dampers and anti-roll bars have all been beefed up and it runs on wider 19-inch alloy wheels than the GTi, with Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tyres.
In the car’s other driving modes — ZEV electric-only running, Hybrid and Hybrid Sports — it delivers a peak of around 400hp and just over 500Nm — outputs that the high-voltage electrical system can sustain for flat-out bursts of about five laps on circuit, or more unconditionally during less demanding road driving.
Ask for more than 400hp for much more than the length of a couple of typical straights and you soon have a very hot, very depleted lithium-ion battery to nurse back into condition.
So the 308 R Hybrid is only a 500hp car in a slightly restricted and occasional sense. That’s the bad news. The better news is that, even with a piffling 400hp, it feels like an indecently rapid thing. Flat out, it’s just about fast enough to outsprint its rivals from Quattro GmbH and Mercedes-AMG up to about 160kph — after which point those electric motors really do become ballast, the ECU ramping down their outputs in order to give the battery an easier life.
But, and as usual with electrified cars, it’s not the outright power or performance that takes your breath away, but its flexibility and immediacy. You can leave the car in a high gear at a prevailing 90kph or so, flatten the accelerator and instantly — with no more than 2,000rpm showing on the tacho — be shunted forwards on a titanic wave of AC-synchronous torque. Peugeot’s claim is that the car will go from 80-120kph in top in just 3.1sec; an Audi RS3 takes about three times as long. Sounds ludicrous, but it’s entirely believable from behind the wheel and could make this one of the most muscular performance cars of its kind.
It’s equally clear when driving the 308 R Hybrid that its powertrain has its limitations. PSA’s automated manual gearbox was chosen on the grounds, I suspect, that it’s cheap and relatively light. It shifts gears slowly and in a slurred and often clumsy fashion.
More often it’s when cornering, when the combustive half of the propulsion system suddenly and unexpectedly engages through the Torsen diff while you’re accelerating through a corner and can cause an entirely unprompted change in the car’s line.
Otherwise, the handling is very good. Those firmer springs, wider tracks and sticky tyres make for huge grip and bring weight and feel to the 308’s steering. Body control is good, handling balance likewise.
This car has huge promise as a super-rarified addition to the hot hatch ranks. Whether it will make production, and at what price, are decisions still be to made by the senior management. But it seems to me that, having taken the car this far and demonstrated its enormous and intriguing potential, the firm has a duty to see the project through.
It strikes me that there would be customers for this car — save for a few provisos. Firstly, the gearbox must go. If it’s to stand a chance, the 308 R Hybrid has to feel like the most technologically sophisticated five-door the world has yet known.
Secondly, that full 500hp has to be made more accessible — if only for a few seconds at a time, as part of a “boost” function that can regenerate every few minutes.
And thirdly, the car should be developed from here on out as a performance road car, with a handling and ride compromise to suit that role. The car’s hybrid powertrain would be much better suited to the give-and-take demands of fast road driving than flat-out track work.