DaveChapin:
Whoopsy:

http://driving.ca/mclaren/p1/reviews/road-test/first-drive-2014-mclaren-p1/

Oh boy, more and more it seems I made the right choice in picking the 918 instead of the P1, seems like the P1 is all smoke and mirror. It is a 727hp petrol power car with 'assistance' from a electric motor 95% of the time. Only time when it will be a 903hp is when it is put in Race mode on a track, and that configuration is illegal on the street.

Also absolutely no regenerative braking.  The ceiling is definitely higher on the 918 and it's future variants.

 

The official word is that they didn't want to compromise brake feel. It's a valid argument as Porsche had spent close to a year just fine tuning the brake feel.

Porsche ended up engineered a storage tank in brake system to capture the brake fluid during the initial regen braking phase and release the fluid when mechanical braking is called for. McLaren on the other hand didn't have the resources nor the time to properly tune a regen braking system, they needed to push the car out as fast as possible to boost their balance sheet, in other words they NEED the money now. 

During braking phase or throttle liftoffs, where regen braking is most useful in capturing otherwise wasted energy and turn that into electricity, McLaren actually run the petrol engine and turn the motor into a generator to recharge the battery, so they are using raw energy, i.e. petrol, to make energy. Smiley

 


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