The Italian supercar maker has revealed that its first EV will be an SUV, and is giving its supercar range a hybrid makeover next year
MILAN, ITALY
Lamborghini has confirmed that it has concrete plans to roll out its first full-electric car at the end of this decade.
It’s a somewhat cautious approach, considering that Ferrari has already made a lot of noise about the upcoming 296 GTB PHEV and Porsche is parading multiple variants of its Taycan EV sports car in multiple market segments.
Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann had earlier hinted that the process of electrifying the brand would start earlier, but now it looks like the first Lamborghini is still up to eight years away and more interestingly, it’s going to be an SUV.
The Lamborghini Urus is the brand’s current coupe-SUV offering
A brand spokesperson confirmed that Lamborghini’s first all-electric model will be a four-seat coupe-styled SUV, with “a nod to the tradition of grand tourers”. At the moment the aging Lamborghini Urus is the only coupe-SUV from the brand, but the Urus also shares underpinnings with other newer performance SUVs from the Volkswagen Group, of which Lamborghini is part of. Within the VW Group, the Audi RS Q8 is notably quicker than a base model Urus, as is the upcoming Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT.
The future Lamborghini electric SUV will most likely be a completely new design built from ground up for electric power though, and could well be introduced as the successor to the Urus by then.
However, Winkelmann did also note that Lamborghini would have a hybrid variant across all its models, including the Huracan and Aventador supercars, within the next three years. To what extent the hybrid power will comprise remains to be seen, though the brand has made it clear that 2022 will be its last year of selling only pure combustion engines, and hints that plug-in hybrid variants will be developed for 2023’s supercar range.
Similar to record sales numbers at Rolls-Royce and BMW in 2021, Lamborghini also saw an uptick in deliveries last year with 8,405 vehicles sold globally last year, up 13 percent from 2020. Land Transport Authority data in Singapore reveal that 47 new Lamborghinis were registered here in 2021.
The Italian carmaker has allocated a record budget of 1.5 billion euros for the shift to plug-in hybrids. While traditional supercar brands like Ferrari and Bugatti face the difficult task of preserving brand identity in the inevitable shift to electrification, Lamborghini’s seems to be ready to rely on parent company Volkswagen’s technology investment, but is taking very cautious steps on the road to electrification.
Keyword: Lamborghini will have an all-electric car by 2030