Lamborghini’s Former CTO on Making a New $1.3 Million Diablo Restomod and the Future of Gas Enginesabout the importance of authenticity, McLaren’s ethos, its current position in the high-performance market, and his vision for the automaker going forward.
With your engineering background, what excites you most regarding alternative power-train development? If you can have the best synergy of both the ICE and electric, that’s the fascinating thing. With a 3.0-liter V-6 engine, like we have on the Artura, with that output, normally you would have turbo lag, but with the e-drive on board, this is not a problem anymore—you can do fantastic stuff. It’s not so much about performance, it’s more about exhilaration.We are thinking more in terms of the power-to-weight ratio. An EV with 2,000 PS and weighing 2.5 tons, everybody can do that.
The hybrid, 690 hp McLaren Artura’s 3.0-liter V-6 engine is paired with one electric motor, and a 7.4 kWh battery.Now that there’s more technology, openness, and neutrality in the discussion, I think e-fuel is a big opportunity. It can’t be a solution for everything; sometimes it’s EV, sometimes it’s hybrid, and sometimes, maybe, it’s synthetic fuels.