Peugeot Sport Joins with Capgemini on Development of its Hybrid Hypercar

Jumping into Hyperspace

Peugeot Sport has signed a multi-year partnership with the global leader in digital transformation, Capgemini, to provide the PEUGEOT 9X8’s FIA World Endurance Championship program team with advanced digital tools. Peugeot Sport is poised to make its return to topflight endurance racing this summer and will capitalize on Capgemini’s data and AI applications expertise to take the performance of its revolutionary hybrid Hypercar forward, both in the simulator and on the racetrack. This new partnership also embodies the commitment of both companies to the energy transition.

Pooling the capacity of Peugeot Sport and Capgemini’s digital tools will enable the team’s engineers, drivers and mechanics to deepen their understanding of the 9X8, while also accelerating and boosting its competitive potential as software development becomes a key factor given that the car’s hardware specification will be frozen for a period of four years in keeping with the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar regulations.

With Peugeot Sport at a crucial stage in the car’s development, this fundamental technological support is a sign of how motor racing is evolving. For example, the specific calculations ability, algorithms and artificial intelligence brought to the table by Capgemini will complement the software developed within the sport and automobile industry to deliver increasingly precise energy management under acceleration and during the regeneration phase (capped by the regulations at 200kW), two vital performance and reliability-related parameters. The improvements introduced by Peugeot Sport and Capgemini to boost the new Hypercar’s performance in the FIA World Endurance Championship will go on to benefit Peugeot road cars.

The disruptive vision inherent in artificial intelligence fits perfectly with the spirit that guided the design of the Peugeot 9X8. The ability to analyze the car’s behavior in real time opens up a whole new world of opportunities for the team, not only by complementing the fast-evolving technologies that already exist in motorsport, but also by contributing to the ongoing quest for ever-higher performance and allowing a much wider spectrum of race scenarios to be taken into consideration.

“We are delighted to have joined forces with the digital technology leader and data and artificial intelligence specialist, Capgemini, to develop and run the Peugeot #9X8,” says Peugeot Sport Director Jean-Marc Finot. “Every meter that our hybrid Hypercar covers on the racetrack or on the simulator will be logged, sorted, and analyzed using Capgemini’s ultra-sophisticated tools in addition to the data collected by the team itself. Peugeot’s association with Capgemini is an example of French technological excellence shining on the world stage and is indicative of how the Group is evolving into a tech company.”