Peugeot Hybrid Sports Car

There was a time that every automaker was a start up company working from a shack, being small and having very limited resources it might outsource car parts one from another. In 1890 Armand Peugeot secured petrol engine delivery for his start up car manufacturing company from the German auto maker Daimler. Peugeot remained a small car production up to 1919 with any particular model reached less than 2,000 units. As the automobile industry world wide matured following the assembling line of T model Ford, Peugeot started to make itself as one of significant auto maker by 1930s.

The French auto maker through its founding father Armand Peugeot had long envisioned a practical and reliable motoring and never pretended to be a sports car maker. That is until they stumble upon a series of successful rally sport competition where the 403, 404 and 504 scored consistently in Safari Rally. Championship winning is an effective promotion tool. The supple and long suspension travel had proven Peugeot’s versatility as well as its engineering robustness in rough African remotely access road, a testament to this day thousands of these three models are surviving amongst the influx of generic modern new car.

Since the merging of Peugeot and Citroën as PSA Group, the French auto maker has further strengthened its founding fathers visionaries utilizing their typical ingenuity. We have seen the five times WRC wins on C4 and Xsara Citroëns through the perfect rally driving of Sebastian Loeb. And recently an all out win of its Diesel powered 908 at Le Mans. Marketing wise Peugeot subcompact car is also dominating UK and European auto market by focusing on green theme, its subcompact car produces one of the lowest CO2 emissions.

Now PSA Group has extended its new found auto market segment by launching into Hybrid Sports Car territory; Peugeot Sports Car 908 HY and Citroën C4 WRC HYmotion4. The Hybrid system enables a proportion of the kinetic energy produced during braking to be recovered and stored. This energy is accumulated by a motor-generator in the form of electricity in battery packs. It can then be employed either to deliver extra power when accelerating or to drive the car using emission-free electrical power alone, with no engine noise or exhaust fumes.

This system can significantly enhance the efficiency of a competition car during the different running phases:

• Braking energy is not entirely dissipated in the environment;
• The availability of additional torque thanks to an electric motor increases the internal combustion engine's useful rev range;
• At a constant speed in electric mode, the vehicle benefits from a longer range (plus 40km), while fuel consumption on road/ pit sections is reduced by 30%.

These real performance oriented gains have been achieved due to recycling an otherwise heat loss and short burst of instantaneous torque from the electric motor, yet environmentally friendly.

Michel Barge (Peugeot Sport, Director): 'This hybrid Peugeot Sports Car 908 HY is in perfect keeping with the overall mission of our endurance racing programme which covers not only the challenge of competing, of course, but also the fact that as a car manufacturer we can use motor sport as a research and development tool for the Peugeot brand as a whole. After innovating through the use of our HDi FAP technology in competition, running a hybrid car in endurance racing would give Peugeot a chance to gain extremely valuable experience that would benefit the development of production cars. Whether we use this technology or not in 2009 will obviously depend on the details of the new regulations published by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest.'

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