McLaren Artura | The Hybrid Super Car Formula

I'm here in Las Vegas for the North American launch of the McLaren Artura, and sadly Mark will not be joining us for this video as he's currently attending Smoked Meat Con 2022. But with that, McLaren was kind enough to partner us up with Jeff, the chief engineer of the McLaren Artura and someone who's worked on nearly every McLaren since the McLaren SLR. Let me briefly give you an exterior, interior, and technical overview of the McLaren Artura. From an exterior perspective, this is typical McLaren. While it is all new and they have definitely changed their manufacturing process to improve QC and potentially simplify some of the manufacturing, it is still a very good looking car and thankfully it still has the billionaire doors that go up and down like you're expecting. When you look at the interior of this again, it's traditional McLaren. It looks familiar, but it is all new. You have a very low dash. You have good visibility. You have very comfortable seats. These are the comfort seats that also have performance seats. You have the Bowers & Wilkins audio system, which is tremendous for a dedicated sports car, supercar, while it does not match something like the BMW iX. For a sports car, it's very impressive and the subwoofer is actually built into the carbon tub to give you the tightest and punchiest space possible. The interior electronics have all been updated. They've tried to make it a little bit more ergonomic so your drive mode controls right behind the steering wheel. You have the latest version of McLaren infotainment, which has wired Apple CarPlay, wireless Apple CarPlay, and thankfully due to the all-new Ethernet electrical architecture of this vehicle, you can expect OTAs in the future. With this latest version of their software as well, you also have all the ADAS systems and all the other things that probably can keep you safe in your quarter million dollar supercar. So when it comes to a technical overview of this vehicle, let's start with the carbon tub. This is on McLaren's latest architecture, which is built to be scaled out in the future and it has designed and manufactured a new carbon tub, obviously to include electrification. This carbon tub is now built by McLaren in-house as well and then shipped to their assembly plant where these cars are hand-made, race-based style, where this thing is essentially wheeled station to station. The tub is stronger, it is easier to assemble, it has less sub-assemblies, and the overall weight of this vehicle is 3,300 pounds as a curb weight. The front suspension is still double wishbone, still has hydraulic steering, which is very rare in a modern supercar or sports car, and it has normal brakes. Despite being a hybrid, it does not have brake by wire. The brakes are carbon ceramics as standard. The rear suspension architecture is new. It is a multi-link. It now deals better with toe-in and toe-out under braking. It's more rigid when it comes to the toe arms. It's the joy of going from a multi-link from a double wishbone setup prior, and the rear of this car has the battery pack as well. It's between the carbon tub and the drivetrain sits the battery pack for this vehicle. When it comes to the drivetrain itself, it is an all-new engine, codenamed M630. It is a V6, a 120 degree V6. It is three liters. It is twin turbo. The turbos are by BorgWern, and they sit between the Vs, so it's a hot V setup. Between the V6 and the dual clutch sits a electric motor. The electric motor is fed by a 7.4 kilowatt hour battery or somewhere around there. Again, that is right behind you in the carbon tub. The combined system output is like 670-ish horsepower and in the mid 500s of torque. So this is a phenomenally fast vehicle, and the electric motor essentially acts as a power fill for the V6. It kicks in at lower RPM. It is good for essentially 40 miles of on-track beating, which is impressive, so you don't lose power for 40 miles on track, and it is constantly charging the battery, which is a great thing. The dual clutch is an eight-speed, designed by McLaren, much like the engine itself. The V6 is the same, designed by McLaren, manufactured by Riccardo. It has eight forward physical gears. It is shorter than the dual clutch it replaces, despite it having more gears than the seven-speed that predates it. However, the reverse gear is handled by the electric motor. But I think with all of that said, it's time to speak to Jeff, the chief engineer, so he can go into greater detail and walk us through the philosophy of the McLaren Artura. So my name is Jeff Grose, and I'm the chief engineer for the McLaren Artura, and I started at McLaren 16 years ago as head of vehicle development. So I had the pleasure of working through the original MP4-12C development and the P1, leading the team that did all the prototype tests and development and all the way through to certification. And then I moved into being chief engineer for the Sport Series, so the range of cars started with the 570 and went through all the way to the 600LT, and moving on from that to the Artura. So Jeff, thank you for humoring me and getting on camera. I really do appreciate it. I've spent a decent amount of time in this car, basically 14 laps on track and half a day in this thing, so I have a pretty good taste of what it's like. Development-wise, this is an all-new vehicle for you? Well, we knew in developing our first series hybrid car that we needed to start right from scratch, so it needed to be a whole new vehicle. Really important, because in order to avoid creating a heavy hybrid, we really need to go back to every single component on the car, engineering out the weight so that we keep, you know, a true supercar-type performance, but introducing the excitement of an electrified powertrain. This, for a lot of enthusiasts, and we talked a little bit about this off-camera, it's sort of a counter-intuitive product, right? You're adding hybridization, decrease the number of cylinders, obviously it makes a hell of a lot more power than it used to, but how did you manage to still make this feel like a more traditional vehicle? Obviously there's no break-by-wiring, you still have hydraulic steering, how did you manage to make this feel more organic? So I think, you know, from the powertrain performance, then clearly we want that instantaneous throttle response, which actually the electric motor is a perfect partner to this new V6 engine. So two of them together creating a really instantaneous response, which gives, you know, really good driver engagement. With the electrified power of the electric motor between the gearbox and the actual V6 itself, what is it actually doing? Can you walk me through what it's doing to the power delivery and where it steps in and where it doesn't? Sure, so in the hybrid mode, when both the motors are working, then we're constantly deciding, you know, where the torque's going to come from from those two engines. So when you tip into the throttle, you're going to get a very quick instantaneous response from the electric motor while the turbo spools up. Electric motor will bleed out a little bit as the turbo comes in, so that you end up with a really nice, fast but linear response that feels very natural, you know, almost like a naturally aspirated car. You're not going to get a sudden wave of torque that is too disruptive. So, you know, really thinking about how we shape the delivery of that torque for the best kind of performance. So it doesn't feel like a very twitchy car initially when you tip in. Sure, sure. How, one of the questions a lot of people are going to have, I guess, is how do you manage to keep the power consistent over a long period of time? Because thermal management with batteries, electric motors, and obviously two enormous turbos back there is complex to say the least. Yeah, and certainly for any kind of electrified powertrain, you're going to trade off what might be your maximum possible power with what you might deliver consistently. And for us, we look at a track session and we typically use the Nardo handling track as one of our benchmarks, but there are other tracks that we use, and looking for some consistent performance over a track session. So, you know, you might get a bit of degradation over a few laps with tires and, you know, you might accept a little bit, you know, but generally you want a really consistent performance. So it's not just a one lap wonder. That's been really important to us. I heard off camera that it was like 40 miles approximately of flat-out range, theoretically. Yeah, I mean, of course, it totally depends on the nature of the circuit or the environment, about how it works, but that's the principle behind it, you know. More than a 20-minute session. Absolutely, yeah. Well, you know, you can use all your fuel in 20 minutes in some cars as well. So, yeah, it depends on the circuit, you know. The cooling for the electric motor, is it separate from the internal combustion engine? Like, can you walk me through the cooling circuits associated with this vehicle? So, because we have a good history now of working with turbocharged engines, we're always thinking about managing the overall heat rejection from the car at high temperature, so we have a big offset to ambience, so we can get a lot of heat rejection, coupled with needing for the charge cooling to target a really super low temperature of the charge air into the engine. So we've always been used to running two parallel circuits, one at very low temperature, and of course what we find is a lot of those HV elements want to piggyback off that low temperature circuit, so we're just using that circuit we're already using for charge cooling, and we're using it for a number of the elements in the HV circuit, apart from the battery, and the battery shares, also shares its cooling, but it shares its cooling with the occupant, because we use the refrigerant circuit, again, one compressor, one condenser, two distributed circuits, one for the driver and one for his battery. When it comes to the suspension setup, your twin-tube adaptive dampers have a pretty wide range of stiffness settings, I heard there's almost like a 30% difference in stiffness between comfort and track, correct? Yeah, so we like to separate the chassis modes, the handling modes from the powertrain, so you can choose whether you want to have a comfortable damping setting, but an aggressive powertrain performance, but yeah, there's a big range between comfort, sport and track then in the handling modes, and are they about 15-10% increments? Yeah, about that, you know, and there's obviously, but there's all sorts of different algorithms going on about what you want to do in terms of, you know, speed dependencies and all other things going on, and yeah, we have roll bars front and rear, you know, recently traditional, although we've gone for a variable wall thickness roll bar on the front for the first time on all our cars, which again saves just over a kilo of weight actually, because, you know, we've got a lot of roll stiffness, you know, so it's quite a big component, and so that was interesting. You have an e-diff now, you have a physical set of clutches back there as an e-diff as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How has that changed the dynamics of the vehicle, and what's sort of your goal, limit handling for a vehicle like this, what are you looking for? Well, I think what we're trying to do is we want the best possible driver engagement, so that doesn't necessarily, you know, sometimes it means you want to drift, right, you know, so it's not all about lap time, it's great to go for lap time, but also we want people to be able to drift and do all the things they want to do to enjoy the car, and we think this e-diff application is going to really help them do that. Hydraulic steering, you guys are sort of alone on the island with basically Lotus when it comes to implementing hydraulic steering in a sports car. Walk me through why you've stuck with it and what advantages that's given you. So, of course, we've got an open mind into, you know, what sort of technologies we're going to use, but for us, we feel that the hydraulically assisted steering is still the way to go, you know, it's still the best for the best response and feedback and feel and confidence building for the driver, and that coupled with the way we execute the braking system, you know, so we're not brake by wire, we're not steer by wire, you're getting that real engagement with the response of the vehicle. We think it's really important for our customers and definitely we think our customers really value it. Thank you, I appreciate it. In Las Vegas, heading on track with a gentleman who's spent far more time out here than I will ever in my entire life, and more time in the 570S. Would you introduce yourself to the boys and girls at home? My name is Bradley Simoncelli, I'm an instructor here at Dream Racing, we're about to enter track here, so. Yeah, perfect. So, you have been here to drive the 570S, I know you've not spent a lot of time in this car as it's wave one. Yeah. How did that car behave at the limit? You've spent an unbelievable amount of time in that vehicle, what was it like? So, that car is very stable in the corners, it does like to understeer a lot, that's where this one is a lot different in two, where if it does oversteer on entry, that's where the 570S does not do that, so that's a big difference in these two cars. Power band wise, obviously this is far more powerful and you definitely notice it, you feel that it's fairly linear in its delivery, the little time you spend in this car. Yeah, it does have that turbo kick like all turbo cars do, but there is no lag, which I really like, so it's very linear. Brakes here, the brakes are not brake by wire, as you may or may not be aware, and they feel pretty damn good. Oh yeah, those carbon ceramics, pretty awesome brakes. What do you look for in a car when you're driving it, I guess? Stability mid-corner. Which presents itself as mild understeer, correct? Yes. I know a lot of drivers who do like the snappy oversteer, but... As I found out earlier off camera, like a dumbass, this car will carry a tremendous amount of slip angle, but if you're too slow like I was, you'll find yourself going the wrong way rather quickly. Was that pretty similar with the 570? So the 570 doesn't really kick out like that, I know the 720 here's slippery. Yeah, no reason to slow down. We'll pass you on the right. So how is the 570, because it's not a clutch-based Rudev. Yeah, so the 570, as I said, you know, doesn't really slide that much. I do have time in the 720S, that car does like to kick out, kind of like this car, and it does have a drift mode. Just like this car, yeah. Do you think having a clutch-based Rudev makes this feel a little bit more organic? Yes, I do. How do you think the steering in this car compares to some of the other supercars, because it is hydraulic. Compared to which car? Like some of the Ferraris and Lamborghinis you get that don't have hydraulic steering, they're more traditional. I think it's very smooth compared to a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Lamborghinis are very tight steering, and Ferraris are very loose, in my opinion. I think it's very, kind of in the middle, it's very smooth. You can feel a lot of the road, which I like. It's exactly what you're looking for in a car like this. Exactly what you're looking for. I know this isn't your day job by any means, but I do appreciate you being a good sport about all this, and dealing with an asshole like me trying to learn to drive the track in a car at the same time. So I guess with that, we'll head into the final thoughts, sir. Thank you for your time. You're very welcome. Thanks for coming out. Final thoughts on the McLaren Artura, and I wanted to say this first. Huge thanks to Jeff, the chief engineer, and the entire PR team at McLaren. I also wanted to thank Bradley, the driving instructor who was assigned to me. Being on camera is definitely not in his job description, but he was kind enough to humor us and humor me while I asked him all those annoying questions in car. So what do I think about the vehicle? Well, from a philosophical perspective, I really appreciate what McLaren is trying to accomplish. They're taking an all-new architecture that has inherent compromises from an enthusiast's perspective. Batteries, less cylinders, hybridization, but they have made the best of it. They definitely have not engineered out the driver and stripped away that emotional driving connection. They have not done what Acura did with the NSX. You actually feel something when you drive this car, and all of its inputs are fairly natural, which is not something you can say in modern sports cars, other than maybe Lotus. It's one of the few brands today that still uses hydraulic steering, which is a godsend. You feel something through the steering wheel because there's no brake by wire. You feel something through the brake pedals. It's properly balanced. The double wishbone suspension and the chassis communicates with you, and because it has an e-diff, it's more natural in the rear to rotate, albeit there is a very, very small window of slip angle to actually use. And I want to be clear, this is a first drive program, which means I spent about 10 minutes with it on track and four hours on the street, so I don't know everything there is to know about the dynamics of this vehicle, to be entirely honest. But what I did experience is, on street, this is a very refined driving experience. If you're going to use this as your weekend, daily-ish driven supercar, it accomplishes that in spades. The carbon tub, which again is rare even at this class of vehicle, does a good job isolating a lot of the road imperfections. It's a fairly quiet car. You have tremendous visibility at the front. The last time I've been in a sports car that has this much visibility is a first-gen NSX, and the engine, despite having less cylinders and being a hybrid, is incredibly smooth and has a nice resonance to it. There's no fake engine noise, which is a godsend. The power delivery is surprisingly linear. The electric motor does a good job filling in the low RPM gap. Then the twin-turbo V6 takes over in the higher RPMs, and it is, no surprise, unbelievably quick at over 670 horsepower and 530-ish foot-pounds of torque. This is one of the fastest rear-wheel drive cars I have ever driven. The eight-speed dual-clutch, at least on the street, is nearly faultless, and on the track, it's fairly responsive. The last thing I want to bring up is this brand as a whole. McLaren makes very expensive cars. This car is no exception. Even though it's the new entry-level sports series car, it starts at a little over a quarter million dollars, and the one as tested is in, like, $250,000. But despite that, the brand is non-pretentious. They prioritize engineering, and their enthusiasm for motorsports is genuine. And that's something I really appreciate about this brand. They really do care. So with that, thanks for watching. Hope to see you soon.