McLaren CEO Dumps Cold Water on Electric Supercar - It'll Be a Long Time Before We See One of These
In a blow to the whole idea of electric cars, McLaren Automotive Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Leiters has admitted that EV technology is simply not advanced enough to create a top-notch performance vehicle, so they are not expecting to try producing one for years to come.
In an interview published by Bloomberg on Oct. 5, Leiters noted that there are too many factors that make EV technology unsuitable for making a supercar.
Supercars are ultra-fast, ultra-sleek, high-performance vehicles that command a super-high price tag along with their top road performance capabilities.
As longtime performance car maker Ferrari explained, “The obvious answer is speed, both in terms of top speed and acceleration. In a hierarchy that begins with sports cars and ends with hypercars, supercars are the high-performance middle, featuring vehicles that are more than capable of tearing up the track and leaving common sports cars in the dust.”
But as Leiters points out, EV technology is simply not up to snuff to deliver supercar performance, and it won’t be for many years to come.
“Weight is super important, you need also the right range,” Leiters said. “I don’t expect this technology to be ready for real supercars before the end of the decade.”
Leiters explained one major reason why electric technology doesn’t work for a supercar is that the tech makes a heavy vehicle that is less responsive and far less nimble on the road. “Weight is at the core of our brand,” Leiters said.
“We don’t want to do an electric car which weighs two tons and then has 2,000 horsepower,” the carmaker added, saying that a high-performance EV could not weigh more than 3,300 pounds.
While Leiters isn’t interested in trying to create an electric supercar, he did say his company might be interested in sport utility vehicles. But they are leaning toward hybrids, instead of solely electric.
McLaren has reported that its global sales in the first half of 2023 grew 52 percent. But that still only accounts for 1,292 cars. So it isn’t as if McLaren is a high-volume manufacturer. This also shows why they aren’t much interested in going electric. They have their niche market, so why muck about with that?
Bloomberg noted that more and more manufacturers are tooling up to make electric vehicles, but so far, many of these companies are losing their shirts on EVs. Some are even already going bankrupt. One has to wonder how long until they all see the reality and start to pull back on the foolish headlong rush to EVs?
Still, Leiters is not the only car maker who has said that EVs are not a major focus.
In 2022, Toyota Motor Corporation President Akio Toyoda noted that many industry insiders privately tell each other that EVs are not that feasible.
“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Toyoda said. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”
Toyoda should have listened to those voices, too, because his company’s first big EV release suffered a massive recall for faulty manufacturing.
As we get farther into the EV era, though, we are seeing the limitations of the whole concept looming at the forefront. For one thing, they aren’t as environmentally friendly as advocates claim, and with current limitations on the technology, it seems unlikely that EVs can be the immediate future of the industry. But as Toyoda noted, many car industry executives are afraid to speak out because radical leftist enviro-activists are intimidating everyone to stay quiet, not just in the U.S., but across the world.
It also appears that the number of EV early adopters is about satisfied and many EVs are now sitting unwanted at car dealerships all across the U.S.A. It appears that Americans are not ready for an all-EV transportation revolution.
This has stunned car industry analysts, too. Apparently, they simply assumed Americans would clamor for EVs. But it does not seem to be the case — at least, not yet. According to the International Energy Agency, EVs only accounted for about 8 percent of the 13.75 million cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. in 2022.
On top of all that, the cost of these cars is far out of reach for lower-income Americans. Currently, EVs start at around $50,000 and the costs go up from there. This is about an entire year’s salary for many lower middle-class income earners.
There are also all sorts of manufacturing issues that cannot be surmounted because neither the technology nor the materials exist to solve them.
There are far, far more problems with EVs than those listed here, of course. So, despite the attempt by politicians to force us all to buy EVs, the claim that EVs are ready to take over the world is an idea that just isn’t ready for prime time.
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