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Williams F1 Becomes Majority Owner of Hybrid Arm

Frank Williams and his Formula One team seem to be very confident that the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) is a thing of the future in road cars. Earlier this week, it was confirmed that Williams F1 Team's stake in Williams Hybrid Power, the company that is currently developing the aforementioned technology, has grown from 40 percent to a majority share of 78 percent.

Back in 2008, when the International Automobile Federation (FIA) decided to implement the KERS unit into the sport, Williams was the only team to develop a magnetically loaded composite flywheel technology, as compared to the other teams that focused on creating an electric system.

Consequently, Williams purchased 40 percent of Automotive Hybrid Power (previous name of the nowadays Williams Hybrid Power) to develop the KERS unit – which turns the kinetic energy resulting from braking into additional horsepower on straight line. After the 2009 fiasco, in which all teams complained of their units' lack of reliability, the F1 teams decided not to use KERS in 2010.

Although Williams never got to test their KERS units in F1, they did however debut it on the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid sportscar earlier this year. The technology proved to be a success, as the aforementioned car is currently competing in the Nurburgring endurance races while powered by KERS.

As stated plenty of times before by Frank Williams, his company doesn't want to develop the unit only for its F1 operations, but aims to become a major KERS player in the future in the automotive industry.

I am delighted that we have now taken a larger stake in Williams Hybrid Power. This agreement means that the business has the funding it needs for the development of a family of MLC flywheels to suit a range of applications in the automotive and other industries. I am confident that WHP will continue to deliver value to its customers and develop into a substantial, successful business,” said WHP chairmain and Williams F1 CEO Alex Burns.
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