Ferrari’s plan to turbocharge or hybridize—or possibly both—every new model going forward is proceeding apace, if a patent filing uncovered by Autocar is anything to go by. The patent covers Ferrari’s idea of a hybrid system for either a front- or mid-engine sports car and, along with an earlier filing for a novel battery integration idea, gives us our clearest view yet of what to expect from the next-generation hybrid Ferraris.
One of Ferrari’s patent drawings depicts a front-engine car with a rear-mounted transaxle (box 11) with a pair of integrated electric motors (boxes 8 and 9).
As the two patents show, Ferrari is looking to rig up a hybrid system that’s both highly variable—with different numbers of battery packs and electric motors—and easily adaptable to different models. The most recent filing, which was just published recently, is somewhat redundantly titled “Electric Power System of a Vehicle with Electric Propulsion,” and outlines a hybrid system consisting of two large batteries, six power converters, two electric motors mechanically connected to a transaxle, and a traditional 12-volt supplemental battery. Ferrari notes that the number of electric motors could vary from just one to four, although not all four would provide power to the drive wheels; one motor could power a turbocharger or various accessory systems such as power steering or cooling pumps, or another could be fitted to the front-mounted engine and augment the two rear-mounted drive motors.
Boxes 17 and 18 are the batteries; each box labeled “DC/DC” or “DC/AC” is a power converter. Circles 8 and 9 are the electric motors.
As none of these components on their own are particularly groundbreaking, their arrangement is certainly of utmost importance to Ferrari. For example, the two large battery packs allow for a saddle-type mounting in the chassis—one that allows a driveshaft to pass between the packs from a front-mounted engine to the rear axle. For cars with a mid-mounted engine, the battery arrangement also opens up better packaging possibilities than a single larger pack. Keep in mind that the sold-out LaFerrari hypercar, which is a hybrid, carries its single battery pack in a compartment behind the seats—and ahead of its longitudinally mounted engine. Although fitted low in the LaFerrari’s chassis, the battery could be less tall, and moving it from between the passenger compartment and the engine could save space in the car’s structure lengthwise.
Here Ferrari shows how a thin layer of batteries could be mounted in the floor while still leaving room for a driveshaft down the center of the chassis.
A saddle-type dual-battery layout is also easily transferred into front- or mid-engine cars. Seeing as Ferrari produces both vehicle types, this is useful. As detailed in an older patent (“Road Vehicle with an Operating Device Housed Inside a Door Sill of the Frame”), Ferrari proposes fitting the batteries and a liquid-cooling apparatus within a vehicle’s door sills, one per side. Just to cover its bases, Ferrari also proposes a battery layout in which the sill cells are augmented by an ultra-thin layer of battery cells in the floor. Either way, sill-mounted batteries can keep the batteries’ weight low in the car, and given how door sills in any car are typically long, straight components, Ferrari could design a uniform piece into which pre-assembled battery/cooling packs could be easily inserted, for use in both front- and mid-engine cars.
How might these sill batteries be charged? Ferrari’s newer patent filing reveals that the two main batteries can be charged either via a DC current—the standard when it comes to today’s “fast chargers”—as well as a household AC current. Of course, the (AC) electric drive motors double as generators when not drawing power, transferring energy back into the batteries via inverters in low-load or coasting situations. In addition to the motors, one of the batteries also feeds two separate power converters, one for the car’s conventional 12-volt electronics (a system that includes a traditional 12-volt car battery as a “buffer”) such as the radio, navigation system, and interior lighting, and another for a 48-volt system that includes the engine starter.
Compared to Ferrari’s earlier hybrid efforts, from the 599GTB HY-KERS Hybrid concept and, later, the LaFerrari, this new system’s basics aren’t hugely different. The new hybrid setup is, however, markedly more modular, which should come in handy as Ferrari moves to hybridize more and more cars.
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