Another Rumor About a Ferrari Hybrid

Ferrari 612 Scaglietti

There is another rumor about a hybrid Ferrari. The British magazine Autocar says “senior officials” at the Scuderia have confirmed they’re hard at work on an all-wheel-drive gas-electric drivetrain that will appear in the successor to the 612 Scaglietti. This has been said before, but this time around Ferrari’s offered a deadline for the technology-2014.

Word that Ferrari was considering hybrid tech first came more than a year ago when company boss Amedeo Felisa told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport “a hybrid solution will come.” The rumor mill kicked into overdrive last summer when Autocar got its hands on patent drawings of a hybrid all-wheel-drive system that uses an electric motor to drive one set of wheels and a gasoline engine to drive the other.

The system is designed to maximize handling, not fuel efficiency. Autocar’s sources say the all-wheel drive system will use motors mounted inboard of the front wheels. The idea is having electric motors up front will improve acceleration and handling because the torque sent to the wheels can be “carefully controlled.”

In a separate report, Autocar says Maranello also is looking at turbochargers but so far isn’t satisfied with the systems it has tested. “Turbocharging will come eventually, but we need to solve the issue of turbo lag,” engine developer Jean-Jacques His told Autocar.

And, as His so eloquently put it, any delay in a Ferrari’s power delivery is simply unacceptable.

What do you think about an all-wheel-drive gas-electric drivetrain on a Ferrari?

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Source: wired.com

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