Peugeot's hybrid racers: PH Meets
Lured to create the ultimate Le Mans car, these guys ended up creating a hyper-frugal hybrid supermini
Le Mans expertise transferred to supermini
Both the head of Peugeot's new 208 Hybrid FE project and guy in charge developing the car's three-cylinder engine had been lured away from their glamorous F1 roles at Mercedes and Renault respectively. Not to make eco cars - they were going to play a lead role in helping Peugeot develop the car that would finally beat Audi at Le Mans.
But almost as soon as they arrived late 2011, the promising 908 Hybrid4 was canned the following January, with the French company citing financial pressures. "I was there four weeks!" says Christophe Mary, head of the 208 FE project.
According to Mary, the ultra lightweight and frugal 208 was largely created to keep them busy and maintain some of the hybrid publicity momentum the 908 had started. But despite the fact that finish line was a headline CO2 figure of 49g/km instead of a chequered flag, the guys told us they ended up getting sucked in and discovering a lot of parallels between screaming V8s and eco engines.
208 project boss Christophe Mary in full flow
Mary and his head of engine development for the project, Julien Lidsky, pinched some of the tech for the 908 Hybrid4, including the tiny and incredibly powerful 120hp electric motor, here throttled back to 40hp. The list of motorsport mods to make the 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine more frugal is as long as your arm, and includes titanium con-roads and Diamond-like Carbon coating for the pistons and valves. They've got a 'fun' mode on the settings and managed to get the 0-60mph sprint to eight seconds.
We put it to Mary that the incredible precision of F1 and Le Mans is a world away from making global cars designed to run on all sorts of rubbish fuel. "It's true in F1 you breathe in, and you hope everything stays together," he says. "But when we do rally cars for customers, even if we only make 150 cars, we know the customers will race them everywhere, put different oil in and won't check them as they should. We know how robust the tech we put in should be."
Le Mans project canned but lives on in 208
"No-one expected us to beat the stated goal. A lot of people said you'd never do better than 70g/km," he says. "We got more nervous as we got closer to Frankfurt. It would be a kind of miracle if we succeeded."
They certainly did that, with the final figure at 46g/km. That's very, very impressive for a hybrid that doesn't plug in. Lidsky is pleased that Peugeot Sport parent company PSA Peugeot Citroen has ordered four of his specially modified three-cylinder engines, for projects yet to be revealed. This feels like a win to him, and that's important to keep the motivation up. As he says, "Competition is a kind of a drug."
[Sources: Autosport, Peugeot 908 official Facebook page]
anyway, the 208 project sounds like the kind of engineering challenge that no doubt helped assuage their disappointment at the cancellation of the 908 project.
That said, the idea of a car which has limited max-performance range but can limp along, actually appeals to me. I would drive one, but not many people would so it's not really commercially viable. It's a balancing act.
Probably the real headline here is the power-to-weight of the electric motor (which I guess heat dissipation is one aspect of).
In the previous thread, a few people scoffed at the "Economy and racing is exactly the same" line but as an automotive engineer, the idea of building a really brave eco car, it does appeal. Yes we're petrolheads, but we're engineers too.
It's not just about the challenge, it's partly about exploring new ground (and the "hmm, that's interesting" factor) and about being a part of technological progress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TAhWdVU3M4
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