McLaren Plastic Bucket dailycarblog
McLaren Automotive Just Created The World’s Most Important Plastic Bucket
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The term “plastic Bucket” used in the banner headlines above is a deliberate misnomer. It’s a slow news day folks. Anyway. The plastic bucket we are referring to is indeed made out of carbon fibre and represents a fundamental shift in McLaren’s all-new, light-weight vehicle architecture which will underpin the company’s next generation of electrified/hybrid supercars. The new architecture, designed specifically to accommodate new hybrid powertrains, has been entirely engineered, developed and produced in-house in the UK at McLaren’s £50m state-of-the-art McLaren Composites Technology Centre (MCTC) in the Sheffield region.

The new flexible vehicle architecture utilises innovative, world-first processes and techniques to strip out excess mass, reduce overall vehicle weight, while also further improving safety attributes. The first new McLaren hybrid supercar to be based on the all-new architecture will launch in 2021.


Mike Lewitt McLaren Automotive dailycarblog

Mike Flewitt, Chief Executive Officer, McLaren Automotive explains all:

“The new vehicle architecture is every bit as revolutionary as the MonoCell chassis we introduced with the company’s first car, the 12C, when we first embarked on making production vehicles a decade ago.

“This new, ultra-lightweight carbon fibre chassis boasts greater structural integrity and higher levels of quality than ever before with our new MCTC facility quickly becoming recognised as a global centre of excellence in composite materials science and manufacturing.

“Our advanced expertise in lightweight composites processes and manufacturing combined with our experience in cutting-edge battery technology and high-performance hybrid propulsion systems means we are ideally placed to deliver to customers levels of electrified high-performance motoring that until now have simply been unattainable.”

“For us, light-weighting and electrification go hand-in-hand to achieve better performance as well as more efficient vehicles,”

Flewitt also confirmed that the new architecture would enable McLaren to transition to 100 per cent electrified supercars.


McLaren Plastic Bucket dailycarblog
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