Quickly, you’ll have the ability to plug in your Lamborghini.
Closing out a half century of purely gasoline-powered V12 automobiles going again to the model’s earliest fashions, Luxurious Italian sports activities automotive designer Lamborghini has unveiled its first supercar with a charging port.
The Lamborghini Revuelto is a plug-in hybrid and, whereas it nonetheless has a V12 gasoline engine, it additionally has three electrical motors. Collectively – the automotive’s Spanish title interprets as “scrambled” – the 2 programs can produce a complete 1,001 horsepower, in accordance with the automaker.
The automotive, whose value is as but undisclosed, will provide driving sensations starting from loud and viciously punchy to clean and silent. There’s a menu of 13 completely different drive modes altogether. Entrance-wheel-drive low-speed cruising might be absolutely electrical, whereas high-powered aggressive monitor driving will make use of all out there energy from the V12 engine and the electrical motors.
The automaker, based in Sant’Agata Bolognese Italy in 1963 and nonetheless headquartered there, shouldn’t be resting on its laurels: Every little thing on this automotive is new, together with the fuel engine which was developed particularly for this new automotive, Lamborghini stated in its announcement.
Even the engine’s orientation inside the automotive is completely different. In previous Lamborghini V12 fashions, beginning with the Countach, the engine’s energy was despatched towards the entrance of the automobiles and the transmission was between the 2 seats. From there, engine energy was rerouted by means of spinning driveshafts to the again wheels or, in many more moderen fashions, to all 4 wheels.
Within the Revuelto, the engine factors in the direction of the again to make room for battery packs. This uncommon association solves a puzzle: permitting the automotive, regardless of the addition of heavy batteries, to take care of ideally suited weight distribution with 44% of the automotive’s weight on the entrance wheels and 56% on on the again. The gasoline engine’s energy, together with energy from one electrical motor, goes solely to the Revuelto’s again wheels by means of an eight-speed transmission.
Two extra electrical motors energy every of the automotive’s entrance wheels, offering all-wheel-drive. The entrance wheels’ two impartial motors additionally allow “torque vectoring,” with differing quantities of energy being despatched to every entrance wheel as wanted for optimum cornering and traction.
The Reveulto’s batteries may be charged by means of a plug, like an electrical automotive, offering a specific amount of purely electrical driving. Nevertheless, Lamborghini didn’t say how lengthy the automotive may drive on battery energy alone.
As soon as the batteries now not have sufficient energy to drive the automotive on purely electrical energy, it’s going to function like a regular hybrid, switching between electrical and gasoline energy – or a mix of the 2 – as wanted.
The batteries will also be recharged when braking or by taking some energy from the gasoline engine at instances.
To save lots of weight, the automotive’s physique is made largely from carbon fiber though rear constructions are constituted of aluminum alloys. The brand new V12 engine can be barely lighter – by 37.5 kilos – than the engine within the Aventador supercar it’s changing.
The plug-in alternative for Lamborghini’s different, cheaper supercar, the V10 powered Huracán, might be revealed later. Lamborghini’s SUV, the Urus, can even change into a plug-in hybrid however, not like the supercars, won’t get replaced with a wholly new mode.
Lamborghini has not but introduced the value of the Revuelto however all these new plug-in hybrid fashions will price considerably greater than the fashions they substitute, stated CEO Stephan Winkelmann. Costs for the Lamborghini Aventador, the manufacturers final V12 mannequin, began at round half one million {dollars}.
As soon as each the V12 Revuelto and the V10 Huracan alternative go into manufacturing they are going to be constructed on the identical meeting line at Lamborghini’s headquarters, Winkelmann stated. Right this moment, these two fashions are constructed on separate manufacturing traces inside the identical manufacturing facility constructing.
The brand new supercars can even share extra elements wtth each other than they do right now. Nonetheless, the sharing of elements and manufacturing traces will do little to offset the elevated price of the shift to plugin hybrid energy, he stated.
The Urus SUV, which is produced in a lot larger volumes than the supercars, will proceed to be in-built a separate manufacturing facility.
The ground area freed up by placing the plug-in hybrid supercars onto a single meeting line could possibly be used to construct Lamborghini’s subsequent new mannequin, a full electrical automotive anticipated to be unveiled in 2028, WInkelmann stated. That mannequin might be a four-seat automotive and never a standard supercar.
Given present battery know-how, an electrical Lamborghini supercar simply isn’t attainable, Winkelmann has stated, as a result of the batteries are just too heavy.