Is a Hybrid in the Future for Corvette?

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Is a Hybrid in the Future for Corvette?
Photo Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

You have to give Chevrolet credit for not letting any grass grow under the wheels of its new Corvette Stingray.

The seventh-generation car is due to be on the streets with real live owners very soon, but that hasn’t stopped GM President Mark Reuss from dreaming about the Stingray’s future.

In an interview with the LA Times recently, Reuss admits that a hybrid Corvette isn’t just a pipe dream.

“I think it’s a very attractive idea, actually,” Reuss said. “I think it would be really fun to do, I think it would build capability inside our company and I think people would love it.”

Actually, an energy recapturing system is already being used on hybrid supercars like Ferrari’s LaFerrari and the McLaren P1.

The Ferrari actually gets 161 of its 923 total horsepower from a system known as a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS), and the McLaren gets 176 of its 903 horsepower from a similar system.

The C7 already has gone super high-tech with fuel-saving ideas like direct-injection and cylinder deactivation, so it’s not hard to imagine the Corvette’s super-smart engineers going to the next level and taking advantage of a KERS system in the future, as they would be able to boost power and efficiency at the same time.

“It’s exciting stuff, I mean it is,” Reuss said. “It’s cool.”


Source:
LA Times

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