The folks at McLaren Automotive want to make a car that will change people’s perception of electric vehicles, just as the P1 did for hybrids.
While speaking at the Financial Times’ recent Future of the Car Summit, McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt revealed his company has some pretty lofty goals for its first EV, according to Car Design News.
“We want an EV McLaren that’s more exciting to drive than a P1,” Flewitt said. “The challenge is maintaining the attributes that communicate emotionally to our customers. We won’t bring an electric McLaren to market until we’ve cracked that challenge.”
Although NIO proved it’s possible to make an EV that’s faster than the P1, besting it in terms of excitement is a tall order. As we saw in the onboard footage from the P1 GTR LM’s record-setting run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, it’s exhaust note, speed and ferocity work together to create an extremely visceral experience.
Sensations such as those are important to McLaren because, as Flewitt noted, it’s an entertainment company, not a transportation one. That’s also why it’s hesitant to heavily invest in autonomous driving technology.
“I don’t envisage full autonomy for McLaren,” Flewitt said, via Car Design News. “Maybe it would be useful for cities or highways, but we’d return control to the driver when they reach the kind of roads where you’d want to drive yourself.”
Partial autonomy frankly seems like the best way to go for McLaren. After all, why worry about deploying nearly 1,000 horsepower in traffic when a computer can do it for you?
Thumbnail photo via McLaren
