Aging British car manufacturer Morgan are set to drag themselves and their cars forward into the 21st century – but this doesn’t mean their next car is going to be sedan to compete with the BMW 3-Series, or a small hatch to go up against the Mazda 2. Instead, Morgan announced that it has secured funding to develop a range of modern hybrid and electric drivetrains for their existing vehicles, and should be available across most of the range by 2020.
Morgan has around £6,000,000 available to make this a reality, with most of the money coming from British government grants and industry contributors. Development of the new drivetrains will be in conjunction with Delta Motorsport and Potenza Technology. Morgan expects development to be complete by 2019, at which point this hybrid and electric drivetrain technology will begin trickling into its range of hand-built vehicles. While they promise hybrid drivetrains by 2020, there was no mention of when a full-electric car might be available.
At present, Morgan’s four-wheel vehicle range uses a variety of petrol engines sourced from major automakers. These include 82kW 1.6L, 115kW 2.0L and 209kW 3.7L V6 motors from Ford, and a 270kW 4.8L V8 from BMW.