- The full Lamborghini road-car range will be plug-in hybrids by 2024, CEO Stephan Winkelmann announced at an event today.
- After that, an all-electric fourth model is planned to follow.
- The Aventador replacement will use a hybridized V-12.
Lamborghini has announced it is set to fully electrify its range, first with an all-plug-in-hybrid lineup, and then with the planned launch of a fourth model that will be a pure EV.
The Direzione Cor Tauri plan—named after a star in the Taurus constellation—was unveiled by Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann at an event in Italy this morning. Car and Driver got the chance to talk to him about it in more depth. The plan means that the last Lamborghini road car to be powered exclusively with a combustion engine will be made before the end of 2024.
“This is a big challenge for the company, but it’s also good news for all of us,” Winkelmann said when we interviewed him by video link, “we want to keep the DNA of the brand unchanged, but we want to reduce the emissions by at least 50 percent starting from 2025 onward.”
This new plan isn’t going to diminish the sound and fury that Lamborghini models are most famous for, in the short term at least. Winkelmann confirmed our earlier reports that the Aventador replacement will use a version of the current car’s characterful powerplant in addition to hybrid assistance.
“The follow-up to the Aventador will still be a V-12, so the sound issue is not going to be something we need to take care of because the engine will still be there, and it will have the right sound,” he said.
Huracán
Company insiders have indicated that the Huracán’s replacement will lose that car’s V-10 – which is shared with the soon-to-die Audi R8 – and will instead get a twin-turbocharged V-8. Which, we’d imagine, will also sound pretty good once Lamborghini’s engineers have finished with it. Based on conversations with senior engineers we believe that both cars will have electrically powered front axles in addition to blended hybrid assistance for their IC engines at the rear.
Sián
Sadly, neither seems set to use the supercapacitor system that Lamborghini developed for the limited-run Aventador-based Sián.
“That is fast charging, but also fast discharging,” Winkelmann said. “If you need to enlarge range and reduce emissions, you need a battery to hold the power. So this is something we cannot continue.”
Urus
The Urus will also gain a plug-in hybrid powertrain, and although we haven’t been given further details we presume it will be a version of the V8 powertrain that Porsche uses in the Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid.
But beyond that, Lamborghini is planning for a fourth model which will become the brand’s first EV.
“We want to have a new model line in the second half of this decade,” Winkelmann said. “It cannot cannibalize what we have today, but my dream is to have the best of two worlds, to try to have a car which is a four-seater two-door like the GT cars of the Fifties and Sixties.”
Pure electric supercars are further away. Winkelmann said there is still limited demand for them. But we’re told there are no plans to continue with combustion-only models alongside the next generation of PHEVs.
One thing is very clear: Lamborghini’s future is electric.
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Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
