The British publication speculates that the Blue Oval is planning to equip the next Mustang with a front-mounted V-8 that motivates the rear wheels with a pair of electric motors that power the fronts. That’s right, the upcoming Mustang may include a rip-snorting, all-wheel-drive, gasoline-electric V-8 hybrid powertrain right out of the gate. Frankly, though, we don’t buy it.
That’s not to say Ford won’t ever put such a powertrain in a Mustang model; it’s just that we don’t expect it to do so until a few years after the launch of the next-generation pony car. When, or if, Ford makes a V-8 hybrid variant of the Mustang, the company is likely to put the powertrain in a lower volume, high-performance model (à la the V-8 engines of the Shelby GT350 and GT500).
To its credit, Autocar isn’t just pulling the idea of an eight-cylinder Mustang hybrid out of its rear end. In fact, the publication relies heavily on a seemingly juicy 2017 patent by Ford. Dubbed “Twin Motor Drive System For Hybrid Electric Vehicle,” the patent includes drawings that show a gasoline-hybrid electric powertrain that includes a longitudinally-mounted V-8 engine. Nevertheless, automakers routinely apply to patent new inventions as a matter of course, and the content within patents don’t always preview production-bound features or technology. That said, we do think this particular patent may foreshadow a future Ford powertrain given the automaker’s commitment to offering hybrid versions of everything it sells, from trucks to SUVs to—yes—the Mustang.
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Still, the forthcoming Mustang hybrid will likely rely on more mundane (relatively speaking) propulsion pieces. Expect a variant of Ford’s turbocharged four-cylinder engine to work with one or more electric motors to produce a peak combined power rating of nearly 400 horses. That should provide plenty of grunt for typical Mustang buyers while also offering reasonable fuel efficiency about town—the usual point of offering a hybrid in the first place.
Although we’re not ruling out a future Mustang hybrid model that includes a V-8 engine and all-wheel drive, we are fairly confident the long-awaited Mustang hybrid, which we expect to debut sometime next year, will employ a gasoline-electric powertrain that forgoes a V-8 for a more miserly four- or six-cylinder engine.
