Lamborghini: Electric power not suitable
Its rivals might be going down a fully-electric patch – think Porsche and the Mission E – but Lamborghini thinks battery-powered technology doesn’t currently gel with its brand characteristics.
Khodrocar - Speaking to media at the Geneva motor show this week, chief technical officer for Lamborghini, Maurizio Reggiani, confirmed the brand looked at Porsche‘s electric platform and ruled out using it because of performance issues.
"Inside the [Volkswagen] group we look at all new technologies… [to find] what is better or useful, but the Mission E at the moment is not suitable for a super sports car a brand like Lamborghini because there are too many issues,” Reggiani said.
Lamborghini’s performance requirements aren’t currently matched by what the battery and electric motors can deliver in many regards, according to Reggiani.
"One is the packaging, the height of the battery is too high for the super-sports car. It’s increasing the centre of gravity and the other issue for us is the performance of a battery pack that doesn’t allow the car to achieve max speed more than 260-270km/h.
"A super-sports car needs to achieve more than 300km/h. That is part of our strategy for the brand, so for this reason we define that this platform is not suitable for our brand.”
Nonetheless, Reggiani is not opposed to an electric future, with a pairing with MIT – codenamed Terzo Millenio – set to explore some of these challenges to create the ultimate electric supercar.
"From the other side, we launch this project with MIT, we move to scout exactly the points at the moment that we cannot achieve but ones we want for a super sports car.
"We need to first of all scout the technology and if it then proves to be applicable we will see what happens, and if we want to put it into production.
"At this moment a Lamborghini super-sports car that is full electric is not possible with the platforms available. If I look really forward sooner or late it’s something that we must face,” Reggiani says of electric cars.
"It’s a challenge even for a super-sports car brand, you need to define something that merges the DNA of Lamborghini. This is mainly related to performance, handling, max speed and some other parameters… At the moment, we don’t see technology to allow us to say this is feasible.”
Source: Car Advice
Latest News