M-Sport has started working on a new electric rally car. The car will probably be based on the Ford Fiesta r5 and will be used at domestic, single day events in order for M-Sport to research and see what power they can make.
Here's what team leader Malcolm Wilson told Autosport:
We're always looking for ways to challenge ourselves. And this is the next step in technology in the sport.
I'm not going to give you any of the technical details - I can't because we're working with other companies who share this vision and we've signed NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) - but suffice to say we're on with it and if things continue to happen and we're able to continue and make progress then I would hope that we could have a car running this year. That would be something in an R5 shell, it wouldn't be the finished car.
At the moment this isn't about the World Rally Championship. All I'm interested in to start with is producing a car that's going to be capable of winning a one-day event at a competitive price.
There's definitely a market for a four-wheel drive car like this and I'm confident the technology is there to do it.
If you look at a modern electric car, they're capable of running for 300 or 350 miles between charges.
A BTRDA round or an event at that sort of level is around 35-40 competitive miles with not a huge amount of road mileage."
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