What do you get when you take the powertrain of a TS030 Hybrid Le Mans race car and put it in a production road car? Toyota are calling it the Hybrid-R Concept and will reveal it at next month’s Frankfurt Motor Show.

The powertrain, featuring Toyota Hybrid System-Racing (THS-R) technology, combines a high-power internal combustion engine with electric motors to achieve a maximum power output of more than 400bhp.

The TS030 Hybrid race car, which finished second at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, uses a 3.4-litre V8 engine with a KERS regenerative braking device – applying this extra power to the rear wheels. As a road car, the Hybrid-R will need to rely more on stored than recovered electrical energy, hence the reason why it’s power is down on the 830bhp available in the race car.

  • Toyota-TS030-powertrain
  • Toyota-Hybrid-R-Concept_G1

The Hybrid-R uses similar technology to that used by Toyota Racing’s TS030 Hybrid race car.

It will also need a pretty special chassis to handle the huge increase in power and torque, because the Hybrid-R is based on a current Toyota production model – what looks to be a Yaris hatchback.

As a point of reference, the £15,495 Yaris T3 Hybrid is powered by a 100 horsepower 1.5-litre petrol hybrid and accelerates from zero to 62mph in 11.8 seconds, so fitting an engine with more than four times the performance suggests the possibility of all-wheel drive in the mix.

In addition to its hugely-powerful hybrid powertrain, the Hybrid-R is equipped with a dual mode control that allows the car’s performance to be tailored to suit either road or racetrack.

No doubt Toyota will be only too pleased to show us how the Hybrid-R performs on the track, so we’ll bring the accompanying video as soon as it’s released.

frankfurt hybrid Le Mans toyota TS030