Ferrari Hybrid Powertrain Loses Flywheel, but Picks Up Power Is the world ready for the better, faster, stronger version of the Ferrari Enzo? If it is, it had better be prepared for it to be a hybrid. The next Enzo, reportedly under development, may be powered by a hybrid V-12 powertrain capable of over 900 horsepower, which was unveiled Monday at the Beijing auto show. This powertrain will most likely show up in Ferrari's next midengine hypercar and might be adapted to suit the brand's V-8 models as well. It was once unthinkable that Ferrari would build a hybrid, but that was before Ferrari engineers devised ways to make the brand's machines faster, stronger and more efficient through electronic wizardry. "Hybrids won't become mainstream until they cannot only be as a good as regular cars, but better than regular cars," Akio Toyoda, Toyota's chief executive, said at a briefing I attended in 2008. This, he argued, was the key to gaining public acceptance of hybrids. Ferrari's system was first demonstrated at the 2010 Geneva motor show, on the 599-based HY-KERS Hybrid concept. The system showed at Beijing indicates a major evolution of the concept and a significant investment in the system's further development. The details divulged at Beijing included packaging refinements that allowed Ferrari to make the whole system smaller, lighter and simpler. For all the advanced technological thought embodied by this powertrain, one of the most critical changes sounds the most anachronistic: a generator has replaced the alternator. This is a bit difficult to explain in anything less than a Society of Automotive Engineers white paper, but essentially, the generator decouples during acceleration to minimize drag. The hybrid-drive power unit includes a battery pack and electric motor of unidentified capacities, which work with the V-12 to put power through a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission. This system is more conventional than the Formula One-based HY-KERS version shown two years ago, which included a flywheel-based energy recapture and storage system derived from Ferrari's Formula One race program. On the V-12-based unit, the electric motor, not a separate flywheel system, recaptures energy during deceleration and feeds it back to the batteries. The whole system, while helping raise power output, reduces emissions by 40 percent relative to an internal-combustion powertrain of comparable might. Ferrari said this represented about a 10 percent improvement over the system showed two years ago. An earlier version of this post said the engine used for the HY-KERS Hybrid concept of 2010 was a V-8. It was a V-12.