Horse, the engine-making joint venture of Geely and the Renault Group, has revealed a hybrid powertrain designed to be retrofitted into electric cars.

It contains the internal combustion engine, electric motor, gearbox and related electronics in a single unit that, Horse said, can be squeezed into the same space as an EV’s main drive motor.

This means manufacturers could retrofit an electric car with the unit without needing to comprehensively re-engineer the car or having to set up a new production line.

The powertrain can be fuelled using petrol, E85 ethanol-petrol mix, pure methanol and synthetic fuels, Horse said.

It can operate both as a traditional parallel hybrid (driving the wheels) and as a range-extender (generating electricity for a drive motor).

It bolts directly into a car’s subframe. Although it has been conceived to replace the front motor in an EV, it can also be used in ICE car platforms.

The new Horse unit comes as several manufacturers slow their transition to all-electric line-ups.

Notably, Fiat is currently developing a new version of the 500e retrofitted with a hybrid powertrain to replace the old petrol 500 and to buoy its business amid slow sales of the EV.

“For over a decade, it looked like battery-electric vehicles were the only path to net-zero and OEMs planned accordingly," said Horse Powertrain CEO Matias Giannini.

“However, we’re now shifting towards a technology-neutral world, with different markets and applications each pursuing their own sustainable mobility journey.”

Giannini added that the company’s new hybrid unit “allows OEMs to offer powertrain diversity with minimal disruption to production process and resource expenditure”.