Morgan will put combustion engines into its cars ‘for as long as possible’

There will be an electric Morgan sportscar, boss Matthew Hole told TopGear.com… but it won’t be coming anytime soon. Until the technology catches up with Morgan’s requirements, it’ll stick with internal combustion for as long as possible.

“We have an electric programme that’s running in parallel [with ICE development],” Hole said, “and we see a future – not in the near future, in the longer-term future, post-2030 – where we’ll run internal combustion engines alongside EVs.

“We will put internal combustion engines into our cars for as long as we possibly can,” he added. “That’s the DNA of our cars and it’s what our customers want.”

So what’s stopping the development of a fully-electric Morgan? The tech, mostly; specifically, how much the tech weighs. “The availability of solid state batteries will be a key driver for us going forward,” he said. “Once we can achieve light weight, we can get back to the core DNA of our product.

“We know what we are at Morgan. We’ve got a strong identity. For us, it is all about building lightweight sportscars that are great to drive. It’s all about hand-crafting cars. That is our core. The hard points are there,” he added.

Morgan’s had a powertrain partnership with BMW for more than two decades now – is that the preferred partner for the EV programme? “Potentially,” Hole said. “We’re definitely in discussions with them and it’s going positively so far.

“We wouldn’t want to commit right now, but we’re talking to a couple of different OEMs. BMW is one of them,” he said.

Hole noted the 3.0-litre sixer in the nose of the Supersport is already an “incredibly clean engine”, which in that car’s lightweight chassis means “emissions are tiny”. He also noted how BMW has traditionally been quite conservative with its power estimates for its combustion engines… so is there room to turn the dial up on the Supersport?

“The [CXV] platform itself has got loads of potential in it,” he said. “And there’s the opportunity to develop it further now, because we’ve got some really solid foundations going forward. My intention is to keep on developing it. Never say never. Eventually I’m sure there’ll be variants of it.”

What about a V8 variant? “I would love to do another V8 car, but it’s getting more and more difficult,” he said. “Fundamentally for us it’s the availability of the powertrains that’s the problem. There are fewer and fewer V8s available and they’ve all kind of been replaced with V6s, or inline fours.

“We need longevity, and with engines and the size of business we are, we can’t afford to change the powertrain every five years or so. We need 10-15 years.

“I am a petrolhead at heart – at the back end of last year I was driving around in a V8 Morgan and I love that element – but I don’t see it.”