More Details Emerge on BMW-Toyota Hybrid Sports Car

The new hybrid sports car being co-developed by BMW AG and Toyota Motor Corp. will use supercapacitors in place of lithium-ion batteries to power as many as three electric motors, according to Autocar.

The British car enthusiast magazine, which cites unnamed sources, says each company will produce its own variant of the car. The cars will be successors to the BMW Z4 sports car and Toyota Supra sport coupe. The German company will take the lead on body engineering work, and Toyota will develop the all-wheel-drive powertrain.

The cars will use a BMW-developed piston engine displacing no more than 2.0 liters and multiple electric motors, Autocar says. The magazine reports that BMW will build the motors to Toyota specifications at its engine plant in Munich. Power will flow through a manual sequential gearbox and employ a Toyota-developed electronic power control and torque-vectoring system.

The magazine's sources say the powertrain will use basic elements from the 414-hp Yaris Hybrid R Toyota unveiled in concept form at last year's Frankfurt auto show. That car had a 300-hp 1.6-liter gasoline engine to power the front wheels and a trio of electric motors rated at 60 hp each to drive the rear wheels.

The partners plans to adopt supercapacitors to power the electric motors because the devices are smaller, lighter and able to charge and discharge faster than batteries, according to Autocar. It notes that both companies have been working on supercapacitors for several years, with Toyota using them in its Le Mans LMP1 sports cars and BMW unveiling it in an X3 EfficientDynamics concept crossover.

Sources tell the magazine the two sports cars will probably ride on a steel and aluminum chassis. Their carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic bodies will borrow technology developed for BMW's new i3 and i8 electric and hybrid cars.