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Peugeot’s 908 HY
The new hybrid 908 HDi FAP powerplant.

Peugeot Sport has unveiled a new hybrid 908 HDi FAP powerplant.

The car, presented at the final Le Mans Series race at Silverstone in September and called 908 HY, features a kinetic energy recovery system.

This HY technology sees some of the kinetic energy produced under braking either recovered or stored. And this means enhanced performance with no increase in the amount of energy consumed due to a combination of the stored mechanical energy and the energy produced by the internal combustion engine.

It also reduces fuel consumption for the same level of performance, again thanks to the stored mechanical energy.

Peugeot Sport Director Michel Barge says: This hybrid 908 HDi FAP is in perfect keeping with the overall mission of our endurance racing programme which covers not only the challenge of competing, but also the fact that as a car manufacturer we can use motor sport as a research and development tool for the Peugeot brand as a whole.’

The 908 HY can be powered by electric mode, internal combustion engine or a combination of the two.

Unveiled with a new silver-grey livery, it is a taster of what Peugeots next endurance racing car could look like. Yet whether or not it makes it onto the racetrack depends on new regulations, to be published by the Automobile Club de lOuest, that will govern LMP 1 cars from 2009.

Currently, in a non-hybrid car when the vehicle brakes, the energy from braking is lost.
The HY system has three elements which allows it to recover and use some of this energy:

1. A 60 kW gear-driven electric motor-generator which takes the place of the conventional starter motor
2. Batteries which allow recovered energy to be stored in 600 lithium-ion cells, divided into ten battery packs
3. An electronic power converter which controls the flow of energy between the batteries and the motor-generator

The technology could also be seen in other Peugeot vehicles.
Michel Barge adds: After innovating through the use of our HDi FAP technology in competition, running a hybrid car in endurance racing would give Peugeot a chance to gain extremely valuable experience that would benefit the development of production cars.

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