Infiniti has been all about showing us its true colors lately. Following the debut?and eventual quiet demise?of the Q50 Eau Rouge concept (that?s literally French for ?red water? but named after the famous corner on the Spa-Francorchamps racing circuit, itself named for a nearby stream), the automaker put the somewhat less exciting Q50 Red Sport 400 on sale. Now, for the 2017 Geneva auto show, Infiniti has cooked up the Project Black S concept using the Q50’s coupe sibling, the Q60.
As the more serious-sounding name suggests, the Black S is an entirely cooler take on the Q60 than the Red Sport 400 is on the Q50. Infiniti is leveraging its ?technical partnership? with the Renault Sport Formula 1 team for this road car, borrowing inspiration from the racing outfit’s hybrid powertrain tech.
Specifically, the racy-looking coupe benefits from Renault Sport’s energy recovery system (ERS), which harvests electrical energy using a pair of motor/generators, one connected to the driveline and another on the engine’s electrically-powered turbocharger. In Formula 1, the system fills a lithium-ion battery with energy when the car decelerates through a hybrid-car-like regenerative braking setup, as well as a system that converts hot exhaust gas into electricity via a motor/generator on the turbocharger turbine. The fruits of these recovery efforts are then shoved back through the two motor/generators under acceleration. The same motor/generator that harvests br...