Via Autocar
by Greg Kable
24 March 2014
The first fruit of an alliance between BMW and Toyota will be a two-seat sports car that will bring performance-boosting supercapacitor technology to a series-production model for the first time.
Confirmed by BMW chairman Norbert Reithofer and Toyota boss Akio Toyoda late last year, the new sports car will sire a radically different BMW Z4 replacement, previewed here, and a spiritual successor to the Supra, at which Toyota hinted with its FT-1 concept at the Detroit motor show in January.
The new sports car will feature a front-engined layout. But unlike Toyota’s FT-1 concept, it is likely to be four-wheel drive thanks to the use of a direct-injection petrol engine and electric motors. These power sources will form part of a high-tech supercapacitor-touting hybrid system that draws on technology and expertise gained from Toyota’s Le Mans LMP1 sports car programme.
Toyota’s role in the sports car project centres around a newly developed plug-in hybrid system. It uses supercapacitors for short-term kinetic energy storage and a performance boost.
BMW and Toyota have chosen supercapacitors because they can absorb and discharge kinetic energy more rapidly than the latest generation of lithium ion batteries. They are also typically smaller and lighter than existing energy storage sources. BMW first aired the technology on the X3 EfficientDynamics concept car in 2005 and has been pushing hard to bring it to production.
Plans to put a supercapacitor hybrid system into production were previewed on the Toyota Yaris Hybrid R at last year’s Frankfurt show. It used a 300bhp 1.6-litre petrol engine to power the front wheels and a trio of 60bhp motors that powered the rear wheels and provided a boost function for added drive to the front axle. All up, the combined set-up developed 414bhp.
The system being engineered for the new sports car is described as a departure from that used by the Yaris Hybrid R, although the basics will be carried over.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/ge...rts-car-toyota