McLaren announces blueprint for future

While the McLaren Formula One team looks set for another year off the pace, the road car division is going from strength to strength.

Six years since its inception, the British company announced its Track22 business plan that will steer it over the next six years.

The key point within the plan is that McLaren aims to have 'at least' 50 per cent of its range propelled by hybrid technology by 2022.

"Hybridisation has obvious CO2 and fuel consumption advantages but for us," said McLaren Automotive Chief Executive Officer Mike Flewitt.

"But we won't stop there. Our engineers have even started work on a one-off prototype to evaluate the possible benefits of a fully-electric powertrain in an Ultimate Series car; such is the pace of development," he continued.

McLaren intends to invest 20 to 25 per cent of its turnover in future product research and development, a percentage they claim to be industry leading. This investment is expected to hit £1,000,000,000 by 2022, and will assist in McLaren fulfilling its promise of 15 all-new cars or derivatives in that time. They are expected to slot into current Ultimate Series, Super Series and Sports Series tiers.

The success of the Super Series LT models has led to McLaren announcing the initials as a 'track-focused sub-brand' with further models to be added to the line-up. That should start with a Sports Series Spider, which is now expected in 2017.

Additionally a new powerplant was announced, though no details have been provided beyond it joining the existing 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V8 in the run to 2022. By that stage, the existing M838T will be 12 years old.

"Above all, this Business Plan confirms that McLaren Automotive will remain proudly and fiercely independent by continuing to build the world's finest two-seater sports and supercars, hand-crafted by our team in Woking, England," concluded Flewitt, putting to rest (for now) rumours of 2+2 variants.