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Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster

Posted by timothy on from the yeah-well-I-get-better-mileage dept.

MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."

3 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. A little more info (but not much) by flewp · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/a-rumour-explained/ As this post's title says, it doesn't give much more info. Essentially it just adds the information that the flywheel system is derived from the Williams F1 Team's KERS (kinetic energy recovery system).

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    WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
    1. Re:A little more info (but not much) by flewp · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh, no. No team is running KERS in 2010. KERS is not banned in 2010 (regulations still allow it, but it is neither banned, nor required), but the FOTA (Formula One Teams Association) teams have agreed to not use KERS in 2010. All of the teams so far are members of FOTA, which means unless one of them breaks ranks, we won't see KERS on the grid in 2010.

      --
      WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
  2. Will Porsche succeed where KERS failed? by psperl · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is very similiar to the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) that was used by some F1 teams last year such as McLaren and Ferrari. The system failed because the gains weren't enough to offset weight and bulk of the system. All F1 cars weigh 600kg, but the cars themselves are actually much lighter and need to be ballasted to reach this weight. The distribution of this ballast is very important, as keeping the center of gravity low on a race car is critical. Cars with KERS has a higher center of gravity than other cars because the KERS systems couldn't be placed as low as ballast. Add to that the loss of development time on other areas of the car, and the result is that all of the teams with KERS performed very poorly. This Porsche could make a hybrid system work, as it has more design flexibility and a longer race. Fuel savings will be exxagerated by the extreme length of the race, which is 12 times longer than the maximum time allowed for an F1 race.