McLaren has built its first-ever fully electric supercar prototype, the company’s engineering design director has confirmed. Speaking to UK’s Autocar, Dan Parry-Williams has confirmed the information, also revealing additional details surrounding the project.

According to Parry-Williams, the biggest challenge here is still battery technology, because really high performance for track use requires a lot of energy. Simply said, the batteries in an electric supercar will be completely drained after only half an hour on the track, the engineer explains.

Given that, a pure EV from McLaren is still a way off, but the next logical step for the automaker also comprises electrification. It's called hybridization and the next generation hybrid models from the British brand is expected to account for about 50 percent of all McLarens sold by 2022 – and they will be capable of going really fast on track and quickly regenerate the required energy.

“You can potentially manage with a niche car,” Parry- Williams explained. “If you exhaust the battery but then have to do one recharging lap, that strikes me as being okay. But if you haven’t got an on-board generator you’ve got a full EV, you haven’t got the luxury of doing that.”

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A purely electric McLaren is expected to arrive as part of the company’s Track22 strategy and to be positioned just below the flagship P1 supercar. Think of it as a successor for the 675 LT, capable of reaching 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) from a standstill in less than three seconds. Thankfully, it won’t “have a £1 million ($1.4 million) price tag.”

Note: McLaren Ultimate Vision Gran Turismo pictured.

Source: Autocar