McLaren has a long heritage of making some of the fastest cars in the world and that’s mainly due to their active involvement in the world of motorsports. But unlike most other brands that rely on high-performance engines for their sports cars, McLaren has been leveraging electrified powertrains for its supercars. Case in point, McLaren P1, introduced in 2013, and the upcoming Speedtail. But with a global push towards cleaner powertrain, the iconic sports car maker intends to add more electrified vehicles to its portfolio and has developed an all-new lightweight architecture to underpin its future electric cars. It is a flexible architecture that has been specially developed for hybrid vehicles and makes use of carbon fibre. However, the carmaker noted that this platform will also help McLaren to transition to 100 per cent electrified supercars.

Mike Flewitt, CEO, McLaren Automotive, said, “This new, ultra-lightweight carbon fibre chassis boasts greater structural integrity and higher levels of quality than ever before with our new MCTC facility quickly becoming recognized as a global center of excellence in composite materials science and manufacturing. Our advanced expertize in light weight composites processes and manufacturing combined with our experience in cutting-edge battery technology and high-performance hybrid propulsion systems means we are ideally placed to deliver to customers levels of electrified high-performance motoring that until now have simply been unattainable.”

McLaren’s new architecture is made of carbon fibre and each chassis requires hundreds of pieces of especially developed carbon fibre. The new mono cell chassis will be designed and manufactured by McLaren itself as opposed to the carbon fibre tubs of Speedtail and GT, which are designed by an Austrian company. McLaren’s upcoming hybrid cars underpinned by this new architecture are likely to use the company’s M840TQ hybrid powertrain that will also be used on the upcoming Speedtail. This powertrain combines 4.0-litre, V8, twin-turbocharged engine with an electric motor that uses Formula E-derived technology.