THE ‘NEW WAVES’ OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES BY McLAREN APPLIED

Stephen Lambert, Head of Automotive Electrification at McLaren Applied, talks about the challenges the industry has faced over the past few years, how electric motorsport has influenced the new age of EVs, and what the future of the sector might look like.

McLaren is one of the biggest names in the automotive sector and is one of the most successful motorsport brands of all time, and large part of that success can be attributed to McLaren Applied, which develops and delivers advanced engineering and technology solutions.

McLaren Applied is also at the heart of the company’s commitment to electrification, too. In the year that McLaren makes its debut in Formula E and continues its journey in Extreme E, the manufacturer’s future is very much an electric one.

Stephen Lambert is spearheading that journey, and in his role as Head of Automotive Electrification at McLaren Applied, Stephen has helped develop and accelerate the move to electric vehicles, such as developing inverters and power electronics for EVs.

Speaking on The Everything EV Podcast, Stephen spoke about the influence that motorsport has on the wider automotive sector and the challenges the industry has faced through the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as supply chain issues like the semiconductor shortage.

However, having worked in the industry for over 20 years, Stephen has seen the growth of the electric vehicle industry first hand, from the early adopter stage to the “third wave” of EVs that we are about to see.

Stephen said: “I spent some time in in Formula One myself and McLaren Racing, and Formula One is a great place to really develop technology and to understand it. A lot of the learning that we get from that directly trickles down into mainstream automotive. One example is Formula One, and Formula E to some extent, but Formula One is all about efficiency, so the electric systems and the hybrid systems are all about increasing the efficiency of the drivetrain.

“All the cars are the same apart from the driver and the drivetrain. You’re limited on power, so the efficiency is the key differentiator. Similarly, in Formula One, the Energy Recovery System (ERS) is there to make the engine more efficient, so you need less fuel. You’re not allowed to refuel anymore, so if you can carry less fuel, you’ll be lighter and therefore you’ll be faster. And what we’re seeing now is a parallel happening in the automotive industry where we like to call it the third wave of automotive. The first wave was the Tesla’s, the Fisker’s, where you have early adopters coming into the market with EV technology and EV vehicles.

We’re in the second wave at the moment, which is where there’s a scramble to bring vehicles to market, and you can’t go into a dealership now without seeing an electric vehicle and then very soon we’re going to transition into the third wave, which is all about efficiency.

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“To make these electric vehicles more competitive as more of them come onto the market, they’re going to be more efficient, meaning a smaller battery, so the buying cost is less. More efficiency means less energy needed to go at given range, so your recharge time is going to be less to go given range. More efficiency means your components can be smaller, so it will be lighter and will need less energy, and there’ll be more passenger space, for example, or the cars will be smaller or have a smaller coefficient of drag, so efficiency has a really, really big impact.”

Stephen also looked ahead to the fourth wave of electric vehicles: “We’re expecting the 4th wave of electrification to be around vehicle driveability and controllability. EV’s can be a little one-dimensional. They accelerate very fast. But perhaps don’t have a lot of character, so we’re expecting the 4th wave to be around control, character and drivability. Engineering these into the vehicle and a lot of the work we’re doing at McLaren applied is enabling our drivetrains to have more character through software, which will help the automotive industry as well.”