Lamborghini Lays Out Plan to Go Electric

Anyone who thinks battery-electric cars are slow and stodgy is about to have their doors blown off by Lamborghini, which today revealed its “roadmap towards electrification.”

The program, known in Italian as “Direzione Cor Tauri,” will be backed by the largest investment program in Lamborghini history, at 1.5 billion euros, or $1.8 billion, over four years. It will play out in three steps, with pure gasoline models first giving way to hybrids. By late this decade, the Italian automaker said, it plans to bring four all-electric vehicles to market.

“Lamborghini’s electrification plan is a newly plotted course, necessary in the context of a radically changing world, where we want to make our contribution by continuing to reduce environmental impact through concrete projects,” Stephan Winkelmann, Automobili Lamborghini’s president and CEO, said in a statement today.

Prior signals

The plan is not a complete surprise. The auto industry is rapidly amping up its collective shift towards battery power. And premium luxury and exotic brands generally face the biggest challenge meeting tough new emissions and mileage mandates.

Lambo’s parent, the Volkswagen Group, has itself laid out an aggressive, $85 billion electrification strategy covering its dozen automotive brands, from entry-level Seat to ultra-exclusive Bentley which plans to offer nothing but battery-electric models by 2030.

Lamborghini has already begun tiptoeing into the electrified world with the recently unveiled, limited-edition Sian being the brand’s first hybrid model.

While Lambo isn’t saying whether it will completely abandon gasoline power but hints that is a target of the Cor Tauri program.

A three-step transition

Step one comes with the debut of the Sian, though the “roadmap incorporated (the) celebration of the combustion engine,” the company said in a statement. There will be two V-12 models, in fact, announced later this year. The new products from this period will “pay homage to the brand’s glorious history and iconic products past and present.”

The big shift comes with the first hybrid series production model in 2023. By the end of the following year, the Lamborghini explained, “the entire range will be electrified.” The company stressed these products will retain “the authentic Lamborghini driving experience. One step in meeting that target will be through the increased application of carbon fiber “in compensating for (the added) weight due to electrification.”

The payoff will be in a targeted reduction by 2025 in the brand’s carbon emissions.

The next step begins in the second half of the decade with the debut of Lamborghini’s first all-electric model, and the “acceleration” of that shift as two more models quickly roll out — “with the vision of a fourth model in the future.”

The competition is also charging up

Along with the shift to electrified vehicles, Lambo plans to take steps to reduce the carbon footprint of its supply chain and other operations. The company claims it reached carbon neutrality at its Sant’Agata assembly plant near Modena in 2015. While Lamborghini’s Cor Tauri plan is clearly aggressive, it isn’t the only exotic sports car manufacturer shifting to an electrified future. Rival Ferrari has also been laying out plans for hybrid and all-electric offerings. And the two Italian brands face new competition from new alternatives such as Croatia’s Rimac and others that will be entirely all-electric.

Source: https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2021/05/lamborghini-lays-out-plan-to-go-electric/