Hybrid racecar technology ‘trickles down’
ABS, direct injection, turbocharging examples of track-tested turned street-legal tech
A 500-horsepower hybrid? Of course, when it’s a Porsche.
The Porsche 919 Hybrid is a marvel of technology and performance, and struts its stuff on the international racing circuit, starting with the all-important of endurance races — the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
The drive system is based on a compact, lightweight, turbocharged 500-horsepower, 2.0-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine that can reach 9,000 rpm. Electric power is added by two integrated energy recovery systems that replenish the batteries and provide a burst of power on demand; one system even recovers thermal energy via an electric generator powered by exhaust gas.
A motor on the front axle converts kinetic energy into electric energy, which is stored in watercooled lithium-ion battery packs. When the driver needs the stored power for acceleration, the front motor boosts the two front wheels.
According to Porsche, this gives the Porsche 919 Hybrid a temporary allwheel-drive system, because the gasoline engine directs power to the rear wheels while the batteries propel the front wheels. That system was first used in the plug-in hybrid 918 Spyder, introduced in 2010 and available as a limited-edition 2014 model.
A dedicated team of more than 200 engineers developed the new 919 Hybrid racecar, and there are two models racing on the international circuit. Porsche chairman Matthias Muller describes the 919 Hybrid as “our fastest mobile research laboratory and the most complex race car that Porsche has ever built. In 2014, it will not be the fastest car that wins the World Endurance Championship series and the 24 hours of Le Mans, rather it will be the car that goes the furthest with a defined amount of energy.”
The Porsche 919 Hybrid isn’t the first hybrid racecar. The Corsa Ginetta-Zytek 09HS hybrid raced in the American Le Mans Series in 2009, using what now seems like a prehistoric version of a kinetic energy recovery system, or KERS.
Audi has been racing hybrid R18 e-tron models since 2012, and won Le Mans in 2013. Like its corporate sibling Porsche, Audi uses KERS to power the front wheels. Toyota’s hybrid racecar, the TX030 concept, used KERS to push extra horsepower to the rear wheels. But after repeatedly losing to Audi, Toyota has redesigned the TX030 to push power more evenly to all four wheels.
There’s also the Honda NSX Concept-GT hybrid racecar, competing on the Japanese circuit (in the United States, the streetlegal NSX is sold as an Acura). The Honda hybrid concept features a mid-mounted 2.0-liter turbocharged direct-injection V-6 engine paired with three electric motors to provide at total of 500 horsepower.
Why is this technology important to car buyers? Because the 24 Hours of Le Mans is as much of a test track as the ones carmakers build to test consumer vehicles as they prepare them for mass production. Much of that cutting-edge technology trickles down from the racetrack to our driveways, including ABS, direct injection and turbocharging. Right now KERS is cost-prohibitive for consumer cars, but that may not be the case in five years.
Back to the street-legal ultra-high-performance hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder — which you could buy if you had $600,000 and if its limited production weren’t already sold out — with an estimated 94 mpg fuel efficiency, that’s about double the mpg of the Toyota Prius, which can’t match the 918’s power, including accelerating from 0-to-60 mph in 3.2 seconds.
The Porsche 919 Hybrid isn’t the first hybrid racecar. The Corsa Ginetta-Zytek 09HS hybrid raced in the American Le Mans Series in 2009, using what now seems like a prehistoric version of a kinetic energy recovery system, or KERS.