Toyota working on a hybrid race car to win 24 hours of Le Mans

Milking its hybrid image for all its worth, Toyota’s racing team is looking to a new hybrid race car to compete in the 24 hours of Le Mans race in France. According to Toyota’s R&D head Kazuo Okamoto, Toyota has not decided whether it will take place in the Le Mans race, but is currently developing a car that can win there.

“We want to enter when we are confident of victory,” Okamoto said.

Toyota’s came in second at the 1999 Le Mans race which was also Toyota’s last time at the Le Mans before it started to pursue Formula One.

Toyota’s focus is on a...
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lexusrox123 - 3/31/2008 2:01:05 PM

+1 Boost

whatever...i couldn't really care less either way, actually : \

ChicaneShooter - 4/2/2008 7:40:20 AM

+1 Boost

the ability to CAPTURE ENERGY otherwise THROWN AWAY will give this toyota a huge advantage.

the main limitation of regenerative braking in a race car vs. an ordinary one, is being able to rapidly stuff the tremendous kinetic energies into a battery. the hybrid Supra got around this by using super-capacitors. this technology will make hybrid racers EVEN MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT than diesels, for ANY LENGTH racing venue.

all the chemical energy used to accelerate and maintain speed is simply DUMPED as heat in conventional cars' braking systems. hybrid racers will CAPTURE and RECYLE a substantial amount of this energy. this is why the supra won so handily.

toyota is going to REVOLUTIONIZE racing!

Atenza28 - 3/31/2008 4:46:23 PM

-1 Boost

This is an interesting idea. There is a problem though. They will never be able to get away clean with this idea. Especially if they ever decide they want to pursue a season in ALMS and LMS, unless their governing bodies want to display a double standard. The most apparent issues are easily seen with what they have done with Audi the past two years. Problem 1; You can't make the cars lighter, well you can but the governing body is just gonna tell you to add weight to the vehicles like they told Audi. Problem 2; A hybrid would be great for gas mileage but so is a diesel in comparison to the petrol motors. The issues here is that the governing bodies told Audi that they are now to use a smaller fuel tank in their cars and because the tank is smaller their re-fueling rig had to be dialed back so it doesn't fuel at the same rate that it would if the tank was larger. I would think they'd tell Toyota the same things. With all that has been done, Audi still wins races and Toyota would be able to do the same as long as they don't have any random reliability issues during the race. And before anyone chimes in with "Toyota is the most reliable company, blah, blah, blah." In racing nearly everything except motors are outsourced so they have little control over small yet important components.

AE86 - 4/1/2008 3:13:49 PM

+2 Boost

Toyota might want to get the 24 h Le Mans rules changed to allow hybrids before building a racer. Audi had to work with the governing body prior to releasing its TDI prototype...