Mercedes engineer says KERS ‘not relevant to road cars’

Filed under: Motorsports, Hybrids/Alternative, Green, Mercedes-Benz

McLaren MP4-24 – Click above for a high-res image gallery

Of the ten teams competing in this year’s Formula 1 championship, McLaren-Mercedes is the only one that’s equipped both of its cars with a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) for every single race of the season. Whether the 60 kW power boost has helped or not is open to debate, but it’s at least been active on both Lewis Hamilton’s and Heikki Kovalainen’s MP4-24 racers.

According to Autocar, McLaren-Mercedes’ Formula 1 engineers developed and demonstrated two KERS systems, one mechanical unit using a flywheel to store power and one electric system using batteries or capacitors. An unnamed source within M-B’s engineering department has reportedly said that neither KERS implementation is relevant for road cars at the moment.

Regardless of its lack of relevancy to Mercedes’ road-going machinery, Anthony Sheriff, managing director at McLaren, says, “What’s important is that it’s pushing the envelope of battery technology to its limits and that has got to be good news.”

Gallery: McLaren MP4-24