00:00 Speaker A
Ultra luxury car maker Lamborghini is out with its new hybrid vehicle with a price tag of $380,000. And our senior Autos reporter Pras Subramanian spoke with the company’s president and got to drive the car. Pras, welcome.
00:16 Pras Subramanian
Yes, yes. The new Lamborghini Tamburario is out, the hybrid supercar. Now, so they’ve now fully electrified their line with hybrids. You know, Lamborghini was supposed to actually put out an EV pretty soon, but they’ve sort of had to dial that back a little bit. And, you know, before we got a chance to drive the car, I spoke to CEO Stephan Winkelmann about their EV plans.
00:55 Pras Subramanian
We’ve seen a number of companies, including yours, kind of push back the full EV timeline. What’s the latest on that?
01:06 Stephan Winkelmann
Well, we decided two things after looking into the acceptance curve of battery electric vehicles, which is flattening in comparison to the previous, you know, thoughts of the global automotive industry. And therefore, also for us, it’s lowering the expectation in terms of growth rate. So we decided that the follow-up of the Urus PHEV will be again a plug-in hybrid car. And then we postponed our first model a bit to understand when is the right time to come with it.
02:07 Pras Subramanian
So it still makes some sense for BEV in the luxury world, potentially?
02:17 Stephan Winkelmann
Potentially, but we have to see as we said here, we have to come not when the technology is ready, but when the time is ready and when it’s going to be successful and when the customers are accepting it. And this is paramount for a company like ours, because we are delivering dreams and not mobility.
03:03 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, so delivering dreams versus mobility. They’re not a mobility company. They’re, you know, they’re an emotional performance company. So actually, that combined with, you know, the EV story, combined with tariffs, that’s been a thing that’s been coming up for really expensive cars, you know, how do you handle that? What they’ve been doing is they’ve been absorbing a lot of that cost and passing on some of that to their customers. They think it’s unfair to pass the whole cost down. So that’s part of the sort of business decision there with the company. Then we have the new trade deal, so that’s going to help them out. Uh, you know, secondly, I kind of asked about sort of the future of the company and where they kind of see this luxury EV maker, I’m sorry, luxury automaker, where they see themselves. And here’s what he had to say.
04:17 Pras Subramanian
What do you see the next 20 years bring to Lamborghini?
04:23 Stephan Winkelmann
Lamborghini is not about volumes, no. It’s about how much you earn that you can reinvest in a newest technology for the future. Because the world is more complex, life cycles are shortening, investments are getting higher, technology is evolving faster. So you have to keep up with it and so we have to grow in terms of awareness, image, and to have a solid customer base, which is appreciating our cars also in 20 years from now. And this depends a lot on us if we keep up with the newest technology, but if we continue also to be trendsetters.
05:55 Pras Subramanian
You know, despite some of these issues with electrification, tariffs, some sort of global uncertainty here with higher rates, things like that, Lamborghini still had first half sales a little bit higher compared to last year, which is more than you can say about a lot of luxury automakers who have been suffering recently.
06:25 Speaker A
What about the new car? You test drove it. How did it feel?
06:30 Pras Subramanian
Uh, the new car is simply, I guess, pretty astounding. The predecessor was called the Huracán. This new Tamburario is 1,000, I mean 900 horsepower, almost 1,000 horsepower, right? A V8 that goes to 10,000 RPM, right? But what’s really interesting about this car is that it has, it’s electrified. So it has two motors in the front, right? That drive each front wheel. So basically when you kind of go around turns, it’ll spin the outside wheel faster, kind of move the car around. So you almost feel like you can do anything in this car, right? Like you can go 200 miles an hour, hit the brakes, turn right really hard, and the car will do it. It’s kind of like almost like magic, trickery, alien technology, whatever you want to call it. Uh, this car sort of has it all and it’s super fast. I will say that because of the turbo technology and the electric motors, it’s not as loud as the predecessor was, the V10, howling V10. This engine can get pretty loud, but if you’re driving 10,000 RPM at that speed, you shouldn’t be on any local roads.
08:06 Speaker A
Who is, who do they take it on? Who’s the rival for this new car?
08:12 Pras Subramanian
So Lamborghini and Ferrari have been locked in battle for a while now. Ferrari would say we’re one of one Lamborghini, they’re just, they’re not our competition, but in reality, they really are. Uh, you have Aston Martin, right? You have McLaren. You have cars up this level, up this price, performance-wise. I’ve not driven the Ferrari 296, but I’ve heard that that car is sort of the pinnacle, and the Tamburario is probably there, if not, maybe surpasses it, I’m not sure. I’ve got to drive it.
08:50 Speaker A
Yeah. Next assignment, that’s what it is. Thank you, Pras.
