Lamborghini Urus to go hybrid-only in 2024, electric in 2029

Lamborghini isn’t committing to any future electric cars beyond these two of its “daily drivers” and as yet has no plans to launch an electric supercar in either its Revuelto or Huracán-replacing lineages because it believes it already has the needs of the supercar market covered.

The replacement for the Huracán will come next year, Winkelmann confirmed, as a car with a new name and a plug-in hybrid powertrain that’s set to be a development of the Urus hybrid’s.

However, Winkelmann believes that future legislation will make it “almost impossible” to keep internal-combustion-engined cars on sale even if they are technically within the rules.

“I strongly believe that after 2035, legislation will be so high for ICEs that it will be almost impossible for the ones with high displacement like ours to be compliant,” he said. “You see this now with EU7 but also developments of EU6. It is very costly and getting impossible to achieve. To develop ICE is incredibly costly.”

The firm develops its models to meet the strictest homologation legislation around emissions, and the Clean Air Act in California is typically the strictest. With the ban on the sale of non-EVs after 2035, Winkelmann inferred that this is the way Lamborghini will have to go. He said: “You go with the most difficult legislation, which is the US, and is really California. Other states adopt California’s rules – typically big cities and that’s where we sell cars.

“Even if it [legislation] is not banning EVs, taxation will be a killing factor. Then mega-cities are talking of abolishing non-EVs before 2035 regardless."

The recent development of synthetic fuels is “more about keeping alive the current car parc, rather than convert” future models to be fuelled by them, said Winkelmman, when asked on the potential for them to allow internal combustion engines to live on.  

However, Lamborghini is in no rush to commit to an electric future for its supercars, because new generations won’t appear for “eight or nine years, which means we won’t have to decide for another three-and-a-half to four years”. He added: “This is an advantage as the picture will be clearer then [around the success or otherwise of electric supercars]. With hybrid [supercars], it’s a non-issue. Nobody expected them to be accepted so quickly.”

Speaking more broadly on electric supercars, Winkelmann said it is “up to us to prove that full-electric supercars can be as emotional as ICEs. We’re working on it, but it is on us.” When Lamborghini has cracked this powertrain technology, the firm will “need to show it earlier” than the production car it will appear in “as it will need to be digested” by the market. At present, Winkelmann said he has “no answer for the sound” of electric cars.