Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann claims that the corporate is on a path marked by 4 issues: sustainability, digitalization, urbanization, and geopolitics. For the carmaker that has supplied a lot visible gasoline for car-obsessed youngsters the world over this previous 60 years, that’s fairly the high-speed lane change.
Then once more, the world that the all-new Revuelto lands in is sort of unrecognizable from the one the rakish Lamborghini 350 GT lit up again when the ’60s had been beginning to pendulate. Watching legacy carmakers pivot towards electrification isn’t all the time essentially the most edifying spectacle, and Lamborghini’s first absolutely electrical automobile and fourth mannequin line gained’t arrive till later within the decade. Which makes the Revuelto a transitional step between the outrageous inner combustion that Lamborghini is finest identified for and the brand new automotive world order. Is that sufficient?
It ought to be. The Revuelto is a plug-in hybrid, however it repurposes the expertise in a fashion befitting this extrovert Italian sports-car maker, an organization whose annual turnover handed the €2 billion mark final yr for the primary time. The truth is, Lamborghini says the Revuelto is an HPEV, for “excessive efficiency electrified automobile,” a semantic sleight of hand designed to distance it from the hybrid norm. Efficiency is up by 30 p.c, emissions decreased by the identical quantity. However this specific hybrid is devoted to increasing the automobile’s dynamic bandwidth as a lot as it’s tidying up its emissions or reframing a V-12 hypercar in a extra socially acceptable means.
Unrecognizable Hybrid
{Photograph}: Automobili Lamborghini
The Revuelto is a captivating machine with a extremely advanced nervous system. “Every part began with the V-12,” Lamborghini’s chief technical officer Rouven Mohr tells WIRED. “We needed a hybrid system that really will increase the notion of the V-12, preserves its identification. The hybrid is there to assist you, to allow you to go sooner, and most of all to enhance the dealing with. You’ll not acknowledge that it’s a hybrid. On the transfer, it seems like a a lot sooner, naturally aspirated V-12, and it’ll really feel like a automobile that’s 150 kilograms lighter due to the torque vectoring. It feels so agile and exact.”
At its coronary heart sits a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V-12 aided by three electrical motors, two of that are mounted on the entrance axle, the third built-in into the all-new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. The e-motor on the ’field additionally acts because the starter motor and a generator. Numerous revisions assist the ICE to an influence output of 814 brake horsepower at 9,250 rpm: It has been turned 180 levels within the engine bay in comparison with the outgoing Aventador to accommodate the gearbox and e-motor, and at 218 kilograms weighs 17 lower than earlier than.
The central tunnel now homes a 3.8-kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which consists of 108 water-cooled pouch cells. To present you some thought how small this pack is, the automobile might be absolutely charged in simply half-hour on a 7-kW energy provide, however the battery pack is extra more likely to be replenished below regenerative braking. The old-guard motoring world could not but be prepared for the sight of a Lamborghini hypercar hooked up to an electrical umbilical wire, whereas EV evangelists could effectively really feel that is too timid a conversion.
The electrical motors on the entrance axle are oil-cooled axial flux items. Mohr and his group selected these as a result of they’re extra compact than radial flux ones and have the next energy and torque density. Every motor produces 110 kW and weighs 18.5 kilograms. Though the Revuelto has an electrical vary of about eight miles and might be pushed silently in Città mode, Lamborghini is evident that the tech exists primarily to intensify the automobile’s efficiency and high-speed dynamics. Along with the third e-motor above the gearbox, the Revuelto’s whole energy output is an attention grabbing 1,001 bhp. High velocity is 217 mph; 0-to-62 takes simply 2.5 seconds. There’s no phrase but on emissions or gasoline consumption.
An “Accessible” Lamborghini
The Revuelto is the most recent in a protracted line of intimidating mid-engined Lamborghini V-12s, automobiles that encourage awe and respect in equal measure. However the brand new automobile, Mohr says, is extra approachable and accessible. It’s true the hybridization presents quite a few prospects to encourage and embolden the motive force: There are actually 13 separate drive modes; Recharge, Hybrid, and Efficiency are new, and in EV-only Città mode most energy is restricted to 180 bhp.
Corsa mode serves up the total 1,000-plus bhp, the e-axle primed for max torque vectoring and all-wheel drive. There’s an lively rear axle, too. The Revuelto guarantees to be extra agile because the tempo will increase and deal friendlier than its predecessors on the restrict. Lamborghini has resisted calling it a “drift” mode, however in Sport mode, with the steadiness management dialed again, the brand new automobile will apparently indulge the extra competent driver in delirious slides.
