The next model in McLaren’s ‘Ultimate Series’ will not be on the market until around 2025. That confirms CEO Mike Flewitt in an interview with Autonews. The CEO speaks of ‘the next generation of the McLaren P1’, which indicates a plug-in hybrid hypercar.
McLaren is going to use a little more spread in the release of its top models. The Senna came out in 2018, this year the freak Speedtail rolled out of the futuristic factory and the brand also started production of the Elva. According to Flewitt, the market is getting a bit ‘overcrowded’, which would be the reason for pushing the launch of the next Ultimate Series model a little further back. The CEO has already released something about the next range topper: within McLaren the yet to be announced model is called the ‘next generation P1’. That hypercar will almost certainly get a hybrid powertrain; Flewitt says that all of McLaren’s “significant launches” will now be hybrids.
What will that P1 successor look like? Recently these patent plates surfaced, which give a nice indication of the appearance of the upper McLaren. That hypercar may be called ‘Saber’, but McLaren has not yet released anything about that. The extreme body kit that McLaren has folded around the car is reminiscent of the Senna and its GTR brother, but also of extreme creations such as the Lamborghini Veneno. We previously suspected that the new hypercar would be the direct successor of the P1, something that Flewitt now confirms. Whether a V6 or V8 will be included in the plug-in hybrid hypercar is not yet known.
The future of McLaren
The UK’s 2030 ban on the sale of new fuel cars is also forcing a small manufacturer like McLaren to think about the future. According to Flewitt, McLaren initially had 2035 in mind as the tipping point for EVs, so the sports car brand will need to accelerate certain developments. So the CEO says that all significant new models will become hybrids and that by 2026 McLaren will only have hybrids in its range. The first fully electric McLaren will not follow until the end of this decade, starting in 2028.