A report has surfaced from Australian site carsales.com.au that purports that Nissan's GT-R could get some form of Williams Advanced Engineering's flywheel-based hybrid system as early as 2015. Yes, that Williams—as in, the engineering arm of the eponymous Formula 1 team. While it sounds outlandish, the report doesn't seem too far removed from reality—in fact, it might just be spot-on.
We've already reported that Nissan is working on a hybrid system to power the next-generation GT-R, which isn't due out before 2017, and we've even uncovered a trademark filing by the company for "R-Hybrid." We speculated that this badge is destined for the next Godzilla, based on its font style, as well as our knowledge that this development program exists. As for the Williams connection, well, Nissan also recently announced that its high-performance NISMO sub-brand had partnered up with Williams Advanced Engineering to develop high-performance road cars.
- Instrumented Test: 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Edition
- First Drive: 2014 Nissan Juke NISMO
- Instrumented Test: 2013 Nissan Altima 3.5 V6 SV
However, despite the existence of all of these dots that are seemingly just waiting to be connected, they don't—at least not at this time. For starters, we doubt Nissan would resort to a complex, flywheel-based hybrid system like the one Williams currently hawks to Audi's LMP team for a mid-cycle update or NISMO addition. What we do expect is to see advanced aerodynamics and exotic materials pioneered by Williams to wind up in a forthcoming GT-R—potentially the NISMO model expected to debut at this November's Tokyo auto show—before the British engineering firm's hybrid tech is eventually adopted, likely for the next-gen model. This could get very good, very fast.
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com
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