Geneva Motor Show 2015: Koenigsegg Regera is 1800bhp of Hybrid Mayhem

 

This is the maddest, wildest, most extreme hybrid hypercar the world has seen to date. And it has made its debut at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show. The figures you will read now are more than a little implausible, so brace yourselves. The Koeniggsegg Regera which means “to reign” in Swedish, employs a twin-turbocharged 5.0-liter V-8 engine and three electric motors, for an aggregated power output of close to 1800 bhp. So let’s not even talk about the petty 0-100km/h figures here. The Regera would dispose 400km/h from a standstill in 20 seconds flat. That’s faster than what the Mahindra Bolero takes to hit 100km/h.

For the insistent ones, the Regera, being a rear wheel drive car, does its 0-100km/h run in a rather slow 2.7 second, thanks to the inability of the rubber to offer traction for those monumental output figures. 0-300 comes up in 12 seconds, the time most C-segment cars in India take to reach 100. If the initial reports are to be believed, those figures make the Regera the fastest-accelerating car in the world.

Click here to read about all the new cars showcased at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show

Designed completely in-house by Koeniggsegg, the Regera sits at the top of the sportscar food chain. The funny part is, its maker wants us to believe that it’s a more ‘luxurious’ alternative to the Agera. And they have a point, as the cabin is much plusher and comfortable as compared to the other race-oriented car cabins in the family. It even features Apple Carplay! Aggressive, yet understated in its own way, it’s distinguished, yet similar enough to its brethren.

Sitting atop a heavily modded Agera, the Regera feastures three battery backs and a monstrous engine. At the center of the car, you have a 9kWh battery. Apart from this, the two rear wheels get an electric motor of their own. Together, the three motors are capable of putting out an equivalent of 700 healthy horses. Add to all that electric wizardry a good old gasoline burning engine, featuring twin turbos, displacing five big liters and capable of producing 1100bhp all by itself. Pretty amazing, huh? You’ll see it’s not – as the real wonder of the Regera is its drivetrain, not the powertrain.

Direct Drive

The Regera doesn’t have your regular, run of the mill transmission employing multiple gear ratios. It comes outfitted with what Koenigsegg calls the Direct Drive system. The system comprises a single-speed gear reduction of 2.85:1 between the engine and the final drive. There simply aren’t any other ratios to swap. The engine and the final drive are connected via a hydraulic coupling. The coupling is open when you start from a standstill. With the coupling open, all the power is derived from the crank mounted electric motor with no need for a gearbox. The electric motor fills the lack of torque at the bottom of the barrel. As the speed, and resultantly the revs build up, the hydraulic coupling begins to close.

Once the revs build up nicely after 50 km/h, the engine kicks in, the coupling closes and the gasoline motor starts playing an increasingly dominant role in building speed there-on. In this way, employing battery and gasoline power cleverly, Koeniggsegg managed to take the conventional transmission out of the equation. That doesn’t make much sense for the customer, but saves Koenigsegg a lot of money.

There’s is a catch to all that madness though. Since the Regera is a petrol-electric hybrid, you can go only 30km on battery power. But electric power on this car is meant only to augment the gasoline monster breathing underneath. Will all the motors and the engine working in tandem, the output may theoretically go as high up as 1800 bhp. Peak torque is 2000 Nm, enough to bring a building down we guess. We really haven’t heard those sorts of numbers, what the hell is the world coming at!