Lamborghini is one of the most iconic brands in the world thanks to its legacy of building some of the most striking but also the most powerful cars on the road. But as electrification pushes power to unprecedented levels, how does Lamborghini stay ahead of the pack? Well, I was lucky enough to ask the man in charge, Lamborghini president and CEO Stephan Winkelmann, at the recent launch of the stunning new Revuelto SV.
The first question I'm going to ask you is, can a Lamborghini have too much power? We now have 1,065 with the Revuelto SV.
You know, when back in time we always said there will be a moment in time when the power output would be too much. What I can tell you now is that it would be never enough. It's how you control the power and how easy it is to drive and how safe the car is. And if these two things match, we will continue. Yeah.
Because that seems to be the challenge now, right? Like it's getting easy in some ways to make a thousand horsepower with just put a big electric motors in, but that doesn't work in terms of... I think you said this one's, this is the most fun, most emotional drive. Where I don't think a thousand horsepower electric car can be as emotional as a V12. So how do you balance that, needing to have the emotion and then wanting to have the power?
So this is about technology, not about innovation. The V12 for sure is the DNA of the brand, which is making the car very emotional. So the vibrations inside, the sound, how you turn the steering, how you brake, all of this has to be unmistakably a Lamborghini. And then with technical innovation on top together with the engine, it's something which has to be a balance in terms of power-to-weight ratio, but also in terms of aerodynamics, braking power, suspension, dampers, all of these have to work together, and also the software unit to make it safe and to make it feel like a glove. If you achieve this, then it's okay.
Yeah. Your old friend Bugatti were talking about super sports cars entering this Swiss watch era. Like the idea of buyers wanting the mechanical rather than just the pure technology, but yeah, the digital technology again, the question of electrification. Do you feel that's true? Do you agree with that? That we're entering this era of where cars like this are as much about the mechanical complexity as anything else?
I would not compare us with watches because this is a world which is much more complicated, because you have to match a lot of homologations around the globe in terms of CO2 emissions, in terms of sound or rumor or noise, however you want to call it, in terms of a lot of things which are changing from market to market. Which is very different from the watch industry, no? You buy analogic or you buy digital.
But they put out a lot of emissions.
Exactly. So this is the point where we have to be very careful not to put it in a too easy way. So we always have to have a lot of technology inside the engines to match with the emission regulations, which is not only about adding power with the battery.
Yeah. You as a brand famously have, you know, paused building an electric Lamborghini, and I think looking at where the market has gone, that was a wise move, right? The market seems to have hesitated, if not outright rejected, electric super sports cars. Do you see that changing?
Well, when we started to think about electrification, it was clear that the first, and if all the first step, let's say round after full ICE cars, is to be plug-in hybrid cars. But the promise of having a new design, more performance, and less emissions. And this is working out with the Revuelto, with the Urus, and also with the Huracán. Then we thought, and this was at the beginning of this decade, that there will be a sweet spot in time, now after the second part of the decade, there will be an acceptance of full electric cars also for our type of cars. We watched it carefully over the years, and the opposite was the case. So the acceptance was going down due to several reasons. So we decided that this is not for us at the time being. So we decided to have another plug-in hybrid car instead of a full electric car as a first model, which is coming in 2030.
Yeah. What are those barriers, the opposition that people have?
The missing of the sound?
The fact that they might have experiences with full electric cars in terms of charging speed, density of the chargers, the range of the electric cars, and for sure also that a Lamborghini is never the first car in the garage. So when you buy a Lamborghini, you buy it because it's a childhood dream, because it has to exceed the dreams you might have. So it's not about mileages, it's not about doing the best in terms of going from A to B in a certain time, but it's going from A to A mostly, and therefore with a very limited mileage, with not being the first car, being very emotional, this is what they're telling us that they will not buy an electric car from us.
Yeah. Do you see a time where electric cars will be desired? That there is a younger, like you say, people don't buy a Lamborghini when they're 40 years old. They buy it when they're 5 years old or when they first see it. That's when they set that goal, right?
