Mclaren mp4-12c and Emissions?

[Fittster]

Mclaren are soon to release a range of high performance cars of which the mp4-12c is the first. None of these are going to be small engined or hybrids as far as I'm aware and they are planning to sell globally.

So how are they going to deal with the Emissions legislation? Porsche and Ferrari can use small engine VWs/Fiats to average out the emissions from their performance cars and Aston have the Cygnet to lower the average emissions of their range of cars.

[Thorburn]

Surely you can just build the fine into your pricing structure?

Nothing to say you can't produce only highly polluting cars, just that you have to pay X amount per car. If you're going to be selling low volumes of high price cars just add that amount in to your list price.

[Streetrod]

A couple of things, Mclaren have been quoted as saying the MP4-12C is going to have the lowest emissions in its class by a long way.

Also EU emissions controls give a certain amount of leeway to low volume and performance car makers like McLaren

[anonymous-user]

Effectively the emissions regs are split into two main parts, tailpipe "Pollutants" like oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons, and methanes etc, and Co2

The pollutants have to be be under the legaslative values (both at zero km and 120,000km), which for a low volume car like the MPC-12 means just fitting large highly loaded (lots of precious metal) catalysts. The downside is of course the cost of these cats, but this just gets passed to the customer

For co2, they have the advantage of a relatively small capacity (for the power) highly boosted engine, and hopefully the attention to aero drag required for high top speed helps with a low drag factor and a relatively low road load.
It also has a automated transmission, so they can "roll their own" shift points for the ECE test cycle - optimised for low co2 over that cycle

Obviously they can't meet the 130g/km "fleet" average, but they fall into the "low volume" segment, where you can effectively just "buy" your way out of the issue, a cost, that again, is passed to the customer.

It's one of the reasons lotus is heading "upmarket" as it is a lot easier to "hide" a £10k hit on a £100k car than a £30k one!


I also think it's pretty likely that a "technology lead" company like Mclaren Automotive is going to want to be involved in the "high tech" rub off from all sorts of hybrid technologies, and again, selling an expensive car means their business case can probably justify the massive on-cost from the R&D (and expensive BOM) from a hybrid version. What exact hybrid system they use is anyones guess, especially as the technology is advancing so fast. (surely some sort of F1 KERS style link etc??)

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 15th December 15:28

[CraigyMc]

Max_Torque said:

What exact hybrid system they use is anyones guess, especially as the technology is advancing so fast. (surely some sort of F1 KERS style link etc??)

The chances of it being anything other than a marketing link to the F1 system are zero.

Quite apart from anything else, McLaren doesn't have a full in-house engine department capable of doing a complete engine, like, for example, Ferrari does.
In GP racing, their engines are from Mercedes HPE in Northampton (ex-Ilmor) and their F1 KERS is from Zytek.

The MP4-12C's engine is from Ricardo, although I've seen stories about it being a joint development. If it really were a JV, where did all these McLaren engine guys pop up from?

Just to add - I am a Mclaren fan, and have been since the days of Senna. This post makes me sound like some sort of rampant tifosi..

C

[anonymous-user]

CraigyMc said:

The chances of it being anything other than a marketing link to the F1 system are zero.

I quite agree!

[Rich_W]

Streetrod said:

A couple of things, Mclaren have been quoted as saying the MP4-12C is going to have the lowest emissions in its class by a long way.

Also EU emissions controls give a certain amount of leeway to low volume and performance car makers like McLaren

McLaren "were" talking about 4000 units per year. If Aston (6K a year) have to consider Cygnet. I do wonder where the line is drawn? I don't think McLaren will shift that many in anycase.