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Toyota’s Alessandro Volta Was the First Hybrid Supercar
Ferrari’s latest flagship, the F80, arrives in the next couple of years with a staggering 1200 hp output. That’s nearly two Enzos worth of Maranello-born prancing stallions, and with active aerodynamics and suspension, it’s sure to be wickedly quick. But behind all that technology and power, the F80 is, at heart, powered by a hybrid V-6. Try going back in time and telling someone from 2004 that the then-new second-generation Toyota Prius would have something in common with the Ferrari that’s supposed to fill the shoes of the F40.
But if it was a Toyota engineer you spoke to, perhaps they wouldn’t be surprised. Nor would they be shocked to learn that both McLaren and Lamborghini offered mid-engined cars with hybridized powertrains, and Porsche had figured out how to hybridize even the turbochargers in its 911. And if you started telling this fictional engineer about the five times in a row that Toyota has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, he might even start looking a bit smug. Called it. Told you so. We even built it.
This is the Toyota Alessandro Volta, a concept car that presaged the coming of the hybrid supercar era over two decades ago. Possibly you can see a little of the GR86’s lower valence, but this certainly didn’t look like anything else in the Toyota range when it was rolled out at the Geneva Motor Show. Imagine parking this scissor-doored three-seater between a beige Highlander and an anonymous silver Lexus RX400h and pointing out that all three shared the same basic powertrain. At that point, at least, hybrids weren’t supposed to be fun. They were supposed to save fuel and also kinda be boring to drive—and much of the time, they still are. But the Volta proved that wasn’t going to always be the case.
Toyota wasn’t first to enter the U.S. market with hybrid power—that was Honda with the funny little Insight. These lightweight two-seaters are pretty fun looking machines, but a bit more of a science project than a rational car. By contrast, the first-generation Prius was a practical four-door, and if it made sounds like a gasoline-powered dishwasher and accelerated like a half-tranquilized tortoise, it did at least deliver on fuel economy.
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The second-generation Prius was better resolved but hardly exciting. It made a good taxi cab or sensible commuter, an efficient hatchback with a complex drivetrain that didn’t require you to spend one second thinking about what was going on under that truncated hood. Put in fuel, get good mileage, rinse, and repeat.
With a reputation for green motoring making the Prius popular among the Hollywood set, it didn’t need to be exciting to drive. However, hybrid versions of other Toyota products represented an additional expense over the standard models (that RX400h was the top of the range at the time), so Toyota figured it would show that hybrid power was both sensible and potentially thrilling. The call went out to Italdesign.
Italdesign had done some design work for Toyota before, notably the original Lexus GS sedan. However, what was wanted in this case was the firm’s expertise with mid-engined cars: the AMC AMX/3, the Maserati Boomerang, BMW’s production M1 and Nazca C2 concept. At the tail end of the 1990s, Italdesign had debuted a series of W12-powered Volkswagen supercar concepts, one of them fitted with all-wheel-drive. Toyota wanted something similar, but with hybrid power.
Things kicked off with the most powerful Toyota hybrid powerplant then available, the 3.3-liter V-6 from the Lexus RX400h. As fitted to the crossover, combustion engine and electric motor combined for a fairly dozy 268 hp. For Toyota’s would-be hybrid supercar, electric motors were mounted on the front and rear axle, and the V-6 placed amidships, functioning as a power unit rather than directly driving the wheels.
Total power now up reached 402 hp, not far off a contemporary 911 Turbo. Even better, the practicalities of mounting twin electric motors meant no driveshafts were needed, so the floor of the car could be very low, and weight and complexity was reduced. Despite being nearly five times as powerful as a Prius from the same year, the Alessandro Volta was over a hundred pounds lighter. In fact, it was lighter than even the modern GR86 is now.
Part of that feathery weight was due to Italdesign’s use of carbon fiber throughout, as you’d expect from a supercar concept. But the battery pack was kept small at just 154 lbs, and mounted up front for better balance. Racing-style pushrod suspension and double wishbones had the potential for great handling characteristics.
The name, Alessandro Volta, came from the eighteenth century Italian inventor of the electric battery. Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was a pioneering chemist of noble birth, and he was one of the earliest to experiment with static electricity and also discovered methane. For his work, the standard unit for electric potential, the volt, was named after him.
A fitting title, then, for an electrified supercar. And the Volta was lightning quick too, capable of 0-60 in around four seconds and a theoretical top speed of 155 mph. At just over 2700 lbs, it was many hundreds of pounds lighter than the 911 Turbo, yet still offered four-wheel grip and plenty of electric torque.
Further, in a typical concept flourish, Italdesign took advantage of the drive-by-wire setup allowed by a hybrid drivetrain to give the Volta an incredible party piece. The three-seater layout sat on a completely flat floor, and the steering wheel and pedal box could be slid in front of any of the seats. It could be left-hand-drive, right-hand-drive, or center steer. You could theoretically drive from the U.K. to France and just switch the driving position based on country.
Even more tantalizing are the details that would happen years later in Japan’s Super GT series. There, a privateer team actually entered a racing Prius in the GT300 class. The car was heavily reworked, with a Toyota-sourced 3.4-liter engine driving the rear wheels, but it was still a hybrid using Toyota road-car parts. More than just an experiment, it managed several podiums and a win, and was tremendously popular with the crowds. Who doesn’t want to see a Prius beat a Lamborghini on the racetrack?
So possibly, with a little further development, the Alessandro Volta might have worked as an actual road car. After all, Honda did eventually build its second-generation NSX as a hybrid, and while that car might not have been a wildly commercial success, it is technologically impressive.
And the Volta may yet get its day in the sun. Lexus is currently working on a followup to the mighty V-10-powered LFA, possibly called the LFR. Prototypes have been spotted testing at the Nurburgring, and the powertrain appears to be based around a hybridized V-8, possibly turbocharged.
Purists, of course, would probably have a lighter first-generation NSX over a later hybrid one, or possibly a stripped-down MR2 with V-6 power. But to get to that bleeding edge of the performance envelope for a roadcar these days, a hybrid is what’s required. Everyone, even Ferrari, knows it now. But Toyota guessed it first.
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It does not look Toyota at all to me. I very much like the design done here by Italdesign.
Very W12 or any Italdesign cars I guess. Not very imaginative aside from the adjustable steering wheel which at the end of the day is just a gimmick at best.