Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Hybrid Racer Debuts, Fails To Charge Audience

Posted in Car Photography, Car Tech, Cars, Design, Fast Cars, Foreign Cars, Fuel Cell, Hybrid, Hybrid Technologies, Newsworthy, Peugeot, Racing, auto industry · Published on September 22, 2008


Photo Source: Motor Dude

Recently, Peugeot unveiled their new green Le Mans contender, the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Hybrid Racer. Although heralded as a major achievement in the racing industry and praised for its environmental progressiveness, I am not enthused. If an automobile doesn’t translate into a real world application, like the Peugeot 908 hybrid racer largely fails to do, then I’m just not interested. To be perfectly honest, I think dropping that kind of cash to engineer a top performance race car that stores any unused kinetic energy is a waste. When was the last time a Formula 1 racer interrupted his crew chief by saying, “Well yes Hank, 0-60mph in under 3 seconds is very impressive, but what kind of gas mileage does it get?”

I’ll hand it to Peugeot though, the design department did a hell of a job creating an aesthetic for the 908 HDi that was both sleeking and imposing, in an impending-alien-probe sort of way. Bottom line: if this were street legal, I’d be all over it, but as it stands, it doesn’t seem particularly exciting.

 

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Comments

There are 3 comments battling for the truth! Have your say!

  1. Cool car. Terrible write-up.

    Words by Jon on September 22, 2008 at 11:18 pm | #


  2. Actually, the more fuel efficient a racing car is the less pitstops it will require, a big factor in the Les Mans. In Formula 1 it would increase the number of laps the car could stay our for meaning more time in clear air when the other cars pit.

    Words by SomeBloke on September 23, 2008 at 12:38 am | #


  3. Racing has historically spawned technology used in cars sold to consumers for decades. And racing is a logical test bed for budding technologies.

    That Peugeot saw fit to put up a hybrid for racing is a historical milestone and means that they found ways to make speed by means other than just internal combustion, which is a good thing for all of us in the long run.

    If this car is successful in it’s racing season, it will mean a series of more robust hybrid technologies trickling down to the consumer.

    By the way, it’s Le Mans….your “Mons” is an entirely different thing.

    Words by 2oonhed on September 23, 2008 at 5:22 am | #



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