That car in black is really sexy, it hides the Jack Nicholson Joker Smile face completely.

I have to say, I still quite like it, but if I use the Porsche car range to describe the P1 and the 918, the P1 will be the GT3RS while the 918 is the Turbo S. One shines better on a track where it can stretch it legs while the other may not excel in one area but it's a completely package where it can do many things good. I guess that's why I picked the 918 and the Turbo S instead of the P1 and a GT3, I am not really a track person after all.

As they said it in the film, McLaren replace the turbos in the 12C with bigger ones in the P1. Boost pressure gone from 1.2bar to 2.4bar, doubled. The 'new' engine block needs extra reinforcement to stand the pressure, so it's really not a 'new' engine, just a strengthen one.

Also, with the much bigger turbos providing a lot more boost, the P1 NEEDS the electric motors to torque fill before it reaches full boost, or else it will have turbo lags not unlike those in the 60s era turbo cars. Porsche employ their emotors almost the same way, to torque fill the lower rev band before the high revving NA V8 reaches optimum rpm range. 

But while the Porsche emotors works all the time through out the rev range,  from what Chris Goodwin had described, in the McLaren, the emotor only works in the lower rev range to fill in the torque gaps, then at the high end when all 903hp is needed. In middle of the rev range is where the gas motor is used as a generator to recharge. This all make sense now why McLaren is doing with a a small battery and all the other hoopla surrounding the P1 before. It doesn't really rely on the hybrid drivetrain that much.

As I understands now, the P1 is normally a 727HP super car, but with a 176HP 'boost' motor helper. The 918 will normally be a 887HP super car but at crunched time, it chickened out  and turned into a 762HP car with the 125HP front motor being disconnected. 

These numbers now become interesting, if the top end cannot be utilized fully by a P1 and the 918, then these 2 cars become quite a bit closer in terms of performance especially when the huge torque advantage and traction of the 918 can be fully utilized coming out of turns. Granted the P1 still have the aero advantage, but that Top Gear test track challenge seems more closely matched now than we all thought.

Another interesting number came up, with 1.2bar of boost the McLaren V8 pushes out 625HP, but even with double the boost it only managed to eke out an extra 102HP.  Could that be the ceiling of the engine architecture?

These 2 cars also had shown the future of cars for us. With regulations dictating tighter emissions and consumptions, future cars will have smaller capacity and turbos, car makers can and will do what Porsche and McLaren is doing, use a electric motor to help throttle response and 'torque gap'. It's like the best of both worlds, we have our high HP performance yet the lower rev range response will not suffer as the emotor will fill in the gaps and provide immediate throttle response, while start-stop function will also works better with electric propulsion in low low speed city driving. A lot of cities already have strict idle laws where engines has to be off, but with electric onboard air-con can still work to provide comfort while stopped. Weight 'could' be an issue but the batteries doesn't need to be like 918 big, it can even be smaller than the P1 setup, with smaller HP emotors and smaller battery size, the weight penalties could go from the P1's 200kg down to less than 100kg, say 75kg Porsche probably already chopped at least that much, if not more from the 918's initial weight with advancement in material breakthroughs.

Future of cars will be different than what we have experienced till now, but when I sit down and think about it, the future is becoming very exciting.


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