One brand defined the modern supercar: Lamborghini. This isn’t to say that the cars Ferrari and even Jaguar were making at the time weren’t brilliant too. But the Lamborghini Miura introduced the DNA of the supercar that persists to this day: mid-engined and the most bonkers, racing grade performance available at the time. In the era of the EV, however, should supercars be going all electric? I asked Lamborghini CEO and President, Stephan Winkelmann, and drove a Miura plus the company’s latest Temerario to understand the evolution.
Lamborghini’s Hybrid Approach To Electrification
Lamborghini has always been the performance car brand with the most extreme reputation – the fastest top speeds, the most extravagant designs, the most “eye-catching” color options. Part of that comes from its heritage as a maker of combustion engines, so it’s surprising that Lamborghini has arguably now taken the boldest steps towards electrification, with all its range now containing electric motors.
“After COVID, we had the opportunity to renew all the lineup of Lamborghini,” says Winkelmann. “We had to decide what to do next with the Aventador, the Huracan and the Urus. We needed to reduce CO2 emissions. But we also wanted to maintain the DNA of the brand. We came up with a very simple promise to our customers. We said that you will have a completely new car with a new design and you will have a car that is better performing than the generation before by having lower CO2 emissions.”
Winkelmann argues that the two reasons why people buy Lamborghinis are design and performance. “When we speak about performance, there are always two sides of the story,” he adds. “One is about numbers, so acceleration, top speed, lap time. The other one is about the emotional side, so what you feel in the car, how you get into the corners, out of the corners, the brakes, the vibrations and the sound. This is something that we need to promise also in the future of our cars. The combination of the electric engines and the internal combustion engines should give us a benefit.”
To get a sense of what this means, I drove the vehicle that defined the supercar genre, and then the most recent example of Lamborghini’s hybridization strategy.
Lamborghini Miura: How It Started
In 1966, Lamborghini launched the Miura. This was its second production car after the more conventional front-engined 350 GT. It wasn’t the first mid-engined sportscar. The Porsche 550 and René Bonnet (later Matra) Djet predated it, and the design had been used in racing cars for some time. But Lamborghini pioneered the idea of putting this track-focused engine positioning in a grand tourer, transversely mounting a powerful 3.9-liter V12 between the rear wheels. Coupled with arguably the most beautiful body design of any performance car ever, the result was a new genre of vehicle – the supercar. Ferrari soon followed suit with the Dino 206 GT in 1967, but the Miura defined the genre.
The first P400 version of the Lamborghini Miura produced 345hp and 355Nm of torque, enabling 0-60 in seven seconds and a measured top speed of 171mph – all phenomenal figures for the time. From 1966 to 1968 it was the world’s fastest production car, after which the Ferrary 365 TB/4 Daytona took over for a few months. The upgraded Miura P400S then took back the crown thanks to 365hp and 388Nm of torque, holding onto the top spot until the Lamborghini Countach LP500 S surpassed it in 1982.
So how does it feel to drive the once fastest production car in the world today? The version I drove was the 1971 SV variant. When it was produced, this car delivered 380hp and 400Nm of torque, achieving 0-60mph in 5.5 seconds and a top speed of 180mph. When I’d gotten over the initial butterflies of being inside a three million Euro classic that had played a major role in the film “The Italian Job” (including famously crashing…), I realized that the Miura still drives like a supercar.
Sure, the brakes don’t bite like modern versions, and the handbrake appeared to be nonexistent, but the handling was surprisingly responsive and confident. The sound was awe-inspiring, with the engine literally just behind your ears and not much baffling by today’s standards. The gearbox wasn’t that hard to use, although it took me most of the test drive to realize you barely need to rev the engine at all to get moving from standstill without stalling the engine. They say never meet your heroes, but the Miura didn’t disappoint. It still has something special and provoked friendly waving from many passersby.
Lamborghini Temerario: How It Ended (So Far)
Fast forward to today. Lamborghini’s most recent mainstream release, the Temerario, is still a mid-engined supercar, although the V12 has been replaced by a turbocharged V8. This car boasts a whopping 907hp, while Lamborghini’s most recent V12, the Revuelto, has three times the power of the Miura. The Temerario can hit 60mph in under 2.7 seconds and reach 213mph. It’s effortlessly quick and easier to drive than you’d expect.
The biggest difference between the Temerario and the Miura is it has a battery (3.8kWh) and three electric motors from British company YASA. Two power the front wheels, while a third augments the combustion engine, which exclusively drives the rear wheels. In theory, these motors could deliver 444hp, but in the Temerario they are limited to 187hp.
The two most obvious benefits of these electric motors when you drive the Temerario are getting off the line and keeping things composed under hard acceleration. Despite the biturbo and hugely powerful combustion engine, the Temerario’s traction from a standstill is incredible, like an EV. The electric motors’ torque vectoring optimizes power delivery. When you accelerate at faster speeds, you do sometimes sense a little traction twitch, but then the four-wheel-drive adjusts to keep things going in the right direction.
Given the reputation Lamborghinis have of catching out inexperienced drivers, the Temerario is reassuringly forgiving of a driver getting a little too enthusiastic with the accelerator pedal. Of course, you could have these benefits with a pure electric drivetrain. The Rimac Nevera, which I drove in Croatia a couple of years ago, illustrates this with its 2,000hp and 0-60mph acceleration of under 1.8 seconds. The torque vectoring on this car is so good that you barely need to touch the steering wheel to remain in a straight line when launching off the line.
That kind of acceleration is brutally exhilarating, but supercar drivers, particularly Lamborghini customers, want a soundtrack to go with that performance. Underlining the importance of noise to people who buy Lamborghinis is the fact that the Temerario’s peak power comes in at 9,000rpm, but the redline is indicated at 10,250rpm. That means a driver has over 1,000 extra rpm to make even more noise without getting additional benefit in performance. This is classic Lamborghini. It’s not all show – the performance is definitely there. But the company can never resist an opportunity to dial up the drama as well.
Does Lamborghini’s Hybrid System Get It Right?
With such a heritage of noisy V12s behind it, Lamborghini could have lost its customer base by adopting a hybrid system. However, according to Winkelmann buyers took the change “in a very positive way. Purchase requests are high.” Thanks to the good reception, Lamborghini is sticking with hybrids even for its extreme limited-edition models like the Fenomeno and its recently launched Fenomeno Roadster version, which was already sold out before its unveiling. “The Fenomeno is the fastest and the most powerful car we’ve ever had. Together with the three electric motors, we have 1,080 horsepower. It’s exceptional, the best we can do right now, and all the cars are sold, so we are on the right side.”
However, while the Lamborghini Miura, with a brief hiatus, was the fastest production car in the world for over a decade, with the Countach taking over for a bit afterwards, combustion cars could find it hard to retain that crown going forward. The fastest production car in the world is now the all-electric YANGWANG U9 Xtreme, taking over from Bugatti’s Chiron Super Sport 300+. Should Lamborghini be considering going all-electric now to maintain its performance-leading image?
According to Winkelmann, the company had been considering an all-electric car by the end of the decade. “We always said we must be there when the time is ready,” he says. “We carefully investigated a lot of things – what the customer wants, how the legislation is changing, and the acceptance curve of our type of cars for electrification. But we are selling dreams, not mobility. Our customers want something emotional. Putting all this data together with our expertise, we realized that it’s not the time for a car like ours to be full electric.”
This seems to be a common trend. Maserati has put its plans for an electric version of the MC20 on hold, citign weak demand, Ferrari has delayed its plans, and despite having Mate Rimac as its CEO, Bugatti has opted for a hybrid system in its incredible Tourbillon. “I don’t think for supercars that the time for full electric cars is today,” adds Winkelmann. “I don’t know about the future. You never know what the new generations are going to demand. But for the time being, even when I speak to people much younger than myself, I still have the feedback that they want the sound and they want the combustion engines. We produce a very low number of cars. The hope also in the future is to have biofuel and synthetic fuel. These things, at least for the European market, give us the opportunity to stay with internal combustion engines even after 2035.”
Although they have tremendous symbolic value, in practical terms supercars are hardly a major CO2 contributor, after all. “They do a couple of thousand miles a year, but we live in this world, so social responsibility is still important,” says Winkelmann. “We also went hybrid because we wanted to reduce the emissions. We take this very seriously. Our factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese has been CO2 neutral since the year 2015. Despite the growth we have had over the years, we have been able to maintain this. And we are continuously working on reducing our emissions even more.”
But for now, at least, Lamborghini’s cars will still have emissions from roaring combustion engines. “It’s clear that gas in our cars gives you a very emotional feeling,” says Winkelmann. “Our customers want to continue to have this.” But he doesn’t rule out pure EVs at some point in the future. “Our R&D is now fixed for the next 5 to 10 years. From there on, our cars must have at least eight or nine years of life cycle. Today, we are already working on delivering the Revuelto, Temerario and Urus. But time will tell. It’s very difficult to make an estimate about what is going to happen after 2035.”
