Three electric motors and more than 1000hp, but still a naturally-aspirated V12 for Lamborghini Aventador replacement
- New V12
- New transmission
- New e-motors
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Full electric power and/or turbocharged engines have taken over in the supercar world, but not at Lamborghini – and not for its all-new 2023 supercar flagship.
The Italian supercar company has revealed that its replacement for the long-lived Aventador will still be powered by a naturally-aspirated V12, but it will be boosted by three electric motors to exceed 1000 horsepower (746kW).
And with 1015hp (757kW) on tap, its output will exceed the 574kW peak of the swansong 2022 Lamborghini Aventador LP-780-4 Ultimae by a significant margin.
Lamborghini says that compared to the outgoing Aventador, its new flagship brings 30 per cent more power and emits 30 per cent less CO2.
And it’s quite possibly the last V12 engine Lamborghini will ever develop, with Europe’s zero-emission rules for 2035 likely to kill off the biggest, purest engine Lamborghini makes after this car’s production cycle.
The new supercar (codenamed LB744 but internally dubbed 74X), will also be capable of full electric running – but only for a maximum of 10km and, even then, only at very light throttle openings.
But president Stephan Winkelmann was very clear about why Lamborghini electrified the LB744, and it’s all about performance.
“The electrification is about performance, yes. Performance, security and making the LB774 a better car,” Winkelmann said.
“It’s a blend of what you are used to seeing in our supersports cars, and innovation. A V12 HPEV – high-performance electric vehicle.
“It’s not the right time for a full electric sports car. People of our brand expect something really WOW!
“There are also advantages in an electric drivetrain like this one; that you can do things you could never do with a combustion car.
“Wheel speed control for cornering, and you can generate an agility of a car and reactiveness that you can’t do with a combustion car.
“Then you can use electrification to generate another kind of driving fun.”
To get there, the LB744 delivers 607kW of power and 725Nm of torque from its V12, 110kW/350Nm from each of its two front electric motors and 110kW/150Nm from another electric motor at the rear.
While Lamborghini is yet to homologate consumption and emissions figures, the 30 per cent reduction cited by Winkelmann would pull it down from 18 to 12.6L/100km, and its CO2 emissions would drop from 442 to 309g/km.
Lamborghini’s traditional V12 supercar layout has been turned around and a new eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox sits behind it (instead of ahead of it in the Aventador).
Where the Aventador filled its transmission tunnel with a transmission, the new car will fill it with a high-density lithium-ion battery – but its capacity is only 3.8kWh, so don’t expect to cruise silently through any decent-sized town.
New V12
Dubbed L545 inside Lamborghini, the 6.5-litre V12 has been heavily modified to reduce weight, fit in a different direction and to rev higher.
By itself, the V12 hammers out 607kW and revs out to 9250rpm, making it the most powerful and highest-revving production Lamborghini V12 ever, and one of the highest-revving production cars available today.
Chief technology officer Rouven Mohr insisted the hybrid systems were all there to lend it support.
“We wanted a hybrid that increases the perception of the V12,” he said.
“We don’t want to make the mistake, like some did, to lose the identity of the car with the hybrid system.”
The engine is 17kg lighter at 218kg and some of the modifications include a new crankshaft and crankcase, while the compression ratio rises from 11.9:1 to a stratospheric 12.62:1.
It needed the new valvetrain to cope with the revs, which are up 750rpm up on the 8500rpm of the Aventador, without losing torque.
“We achieved the rev limit we wanted. We see that some competitors increase the power by increasing revs but the torque drops for them. We don’t do that.
“We wanted more torque and we got 5Nm more, plus the curve is always over the old one at every point in the rev range,” Mohr said.
That means the V12 alone gives the LB774 725Nm of torque at 6750rpm, and while Lamborghini is making no solid performance claims for the new supercar, it will be shocked if it doesn’t reach 100km/h in less than 2.5 seconds.
“We even have improved the sound character. The crescendo is even much more sharp and we have improved the tip-in response; how fast it reacts,” Mohr claimed.
New transmission
Where the Lamborghini Avendator used an orphan of an Independent Shifting Rods (ISR) gearbox, its replacement has forced Lamborghini to develop an all-new dual-clutch system.
The downside is that the eight-speed gearbox is a lot heavier than the ISR and it now sits behind the engine instead of in front of it. And it has 110kW and 150Nm of e-motor powering and discharging through it, plus it’s the effective reverse gear, because the gearbox doesn’t have one.
It’s an incredibly complex transmission, even by the standards of dual-clutch units, with two 100mm triple-cone synchronisers and another three 76mm double cones, and there are only two shafts to reduce weight.
Limited to 800Nm of torque, the differential sits in front of the gearbox across the engine bay. The gearbox is sand-cast but it still ends up weighing 193kg, which is less than the Huracan’s seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.
New e-motors
The new Lamborghini LB477 is technically a plug-in hybrid, because it can be plugged in and charged, but that only takes half an hour, even via a 110kW domestic power outlet.
The other way to charge the 3.8kWh battery is simply to park up and run the V12 on idle for somewhere between five and six minutes. Yes, you read that correctly.
The front-end has two Yasa axial flux motors (110kW/350Nm and 18.5kg each) for faster regeneration into the battery, while the rear is a Mahle unit.
“The front motors are very compact, enabling us to stay with high power and torque density,” Mohr said.
“That gives us torque vectoring and higher recuperation – and not torque vectoring by brakes, but real torque vectoring.
“It gives us a level of energy recuperation that allows you more or less to have the battery charged all the time.
“You can plug it in, but you don’t really need it, and two or three hot laps won’t empty the battery, unless you are full electric.”
The e-motors help the new supercar to run in all-wheel drive all the time and charge a lithium-ion battery with a 4500 Watts per kilogram power density.
Lamborghini even uses the electric motors to work against the engine when it’s blasting up the road using launch control, which minimises wasted wheel spin faster than engine management alone, with the added benefit of charging the battery while it’s limiting wheel spin.
“We use the e-motor when we do traction control and launch control because we have a faster intervention with the e-motor than the throttle,” Lamborghini powertrain development boss Davide Bizzari said.
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Keyword: Lamborghini’s new electrified V12 flagship to produce over 750kW