Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann claims that the company is on a path marked by four things: sustainability, digitalization, urbanization, and geopolitics. For the carmaker that has provided so much visual fuel for car-obsessed teenagers the world over this past 60 years, that’s quite the high-speed lane change.
Then again, the world that the all-new Revuelto lands in is almost unrecognizable from the one the rakish Lamborghini 350 GT lit up back when the ’60s were starting to pendulate. Watching legacy carmakers pivot toward electrification isn’t always the most edifying spectacle, and Lamborghini’s first fully electric car and fourth model line won’t arrive until later in the decade. Which makes the Revuelto a transitional step between the outrageous internal combustion that Lamborghini is best known for and the new automotive world order. Is that enough?
It should be. The Revuelto is a plug-in hybrid, but it repurposes the technology in a manner befitting this extrovert Italian sports-car maker, a company whose annual turnover passed the €2 billion mark last year for the first time. In fact, Lamborghini says the Revuelto is an HPEV, for “high performance electrified vehicle,” a semantic sleight of hand designed to distance it from the hybrid norm. Performance is up by 30 percent, emissions reduced by the same amount. But this particular hybrid is dedicated to expanding the car’s dynamic bandwidth as much as it is tidying up its emissions or reframing a V-12 hypercar in a more socially acceptable way.
The Revuelto is a fascinating machine with a highly complex nervous system. “Everything started with the V-12,” Lamborghini’s chief technical officer Rouven Mohr tells WIRED. “We wanted a hybrid system that actually increases the perception of the V-12, preserves its identity. The hybrid is there to support you, to enable you to go faster, and most of all to improve the handling. You will not recognize that it’s a hybrid. On the move, it feels like a much faster, naturally aspirated V-12, and it will feel like a car that’s 150 kilograms lighter because of the torque vectoring. It feels so agile and precise.”
At its heart sits a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V-12 aided by three electric motors, two of which are mounted on the front axle, the third integrated into the all-new eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. The e-motor on the ’box also acts as the starter motor and a generator. Various revisions help the ICE to a power output of 814 brake horsepower at 9,250 rpm: It has been turned 180 degrees in the engine bay compared to the outgoing Aventador to accommodate the gearbox and e-motor, and at 218 kilograms weighs 17 less than before.
The central tunnel now houses a 3.8-kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which consists of 108 water-cooled pouch cells. To give you some idea how small this pack is, the car can be fully charged in just 30 minutes on a 7-kW power supply, but the battery pack is more likely to be replenished under regenerative braking. The old-guard motoring world may not yet be ready for the sight of a Lamborghini hypercar attached to an electric umbilical cord, while EV evangelists may well feel this is too timid a conversion.
The electric motors on the front axle are oil-cooled axial flux units. Mohr and his team chose these because they’re more compact than radial flux ones and have a higher power and torque density. Each motor produces 110 kW and weighs 18.5 kilograms. Although the Revuelto has an electric range of about eight miles and can be driven silently in Città mode, Lamborghini is clear that the tech exists primarily to heighten the car’s performance and high-speed dynamics. Together with the third e-motor above the gearbox, the Revuelto’s total power output is an eye-catching 1,001 bhp. Top speed is 217 mph; 0-to-62 takes just 2.5 seconds. There’s no word yet on emissions or fuel consumption.
The Revuelto is the latest in a long line of intimidating mid-engined Lamborghini V-12s, cars that inspire awe and respect in equal measure. But the new car, Mohr says, is more approachable and accessible. It’s true the hybridization presents numerous possibilities to encourage and embolden the driver: There are now 13 separate drive modes; Recharge, Hybrid, and Performance are new, and in EV-only Città mode maximum power is limited to 180 bhp.
Corsa mode serves up the full 1,000-plus bhp, the e-axle primed for maximum torque vectoring and all-wheel drive. There’s an active rear axle, too. The Revuelto promises to be more agile as the tempo increases and a good deal friendlier than its predecessors on the limit. Lamborghini has resisted calling it a “drift” mode, but in Sport mode, with the stability control dialed back, the new car will apparently indulge the more competent driver in delirious slides.
Magnetic dampers and a new suspension system and control software supposedly ensure surprisingly reasonable ride comfort. The front and rear anti-roll bars are stiffer, and Bridgestone has developed bespoke Potenza Sport rubber. The brakes are new-generation carbon ceramics, 410-mm diameter discs at the front with 10 pistons, 390-mm at the rear with four. Under braking, the e-axle and rear e-motor contribute to the stopping process, allowing the friction brakes to recharge the battery more effectively.
A recalibrated version of Lamborghini’s Dinamica Veicolo (LDVI) system also helps; an army of accelerators and gyroscope sensors positioned at the car’s center of gravity provide real-time monitoring of lateral, longitudinal, and vertical loads, as well as body roll, pitch, and yaw, now also monitoring the torque vectoring. The Revuelto’s body is notably aerodynamic and uses active aero to deliver 66 percent more downforce than the Aventador. There’s a large front splitter, and a distinctive roof design hustles the airflow to a pop-up rear wing.
Lamborghini refers to the Revuelto’s new chassis as a “monofuselage” in an attempt to link it to the aviation sector. (The company enjoyed a long technical partnership with Boeing.) Although the final weight figure has not been confirmed, the new chassis is 10 percent lighter than the Aventador’s, and with a value of 40,000 NM per degree, 25 percent stiffer. It takes 290 hours to manufacture the new tub versus 170 for the old car.
Lamborghini’s expertise in carbon fiber sees it use various types of composite in the car’s structure. The Revuelto uses forged carbon in its front crash cones, which are half the weight of the Aventador’s aluminum front crash structure yet have twice the energy absorption. Forged carbon is also more sustainable and generates less waste. But pre-preg carbon fiber, which is labor-intensively hand-laid-up and laminated, vacuum-packed, then cooked in a huge autoclave, is still better for the areas of the car that are visible to the eye. Exposed and painted carbon fiber is one of the great artistic statements of supercar design.
The Revuelto is hardly restrained in that department, nor is it as wild as it might have been. It’s a little longer than before, the black zig-zag element on the body side there partly to distract the eye from that additional length. Buttresses connect the roof to the rear wheelarches, and a series of complex and geometric-looking panels channel air into the rear brakes and engine. Lamborghini’s Y-shaped front light motif is now a signature, but the car’s nose is simpler.
Design boss Mitja Borkert is proud of the way he and his team have dealt with the cameras all cars are now required to have; the Revuelto’s are akin to missile launchers. But the car is best appreciated from an elevated point above the rear three-quarters. Highlights include the complex diffuser, high-mounted hexagonal exhaust, and most of all the open engine bay, which frames the V-12 as if it’s a work of art.
The cockpit is fabulous, surely the best yet in a Lamborghini. There’s a new steering wheel with a thinner rim, within which various key bits of switchgear are arranged. Pretty logically, thank goodness: the Drive-mode button sits on the top left of the spar, with an EV button on the right. Ahead lies the configurable instrument screen, housed in a slender binnacle. A large air vent sits at the top of the central display, which semi-floats above a usefully sized storage space.
The Aventador had zero storage space, but the Revuelto at least has somewhere to put your smartphone. And there are cup holders, too, which slide out of view. Screen content can be swiped across to a display for the passenger, and the graphics are coherent and crisply designed. Real buttons–for the hazard warning light and start button–coexist with the touchscreen controls. Some things are simply better to operate physically. Also new are 360-degree cameras to ease the perennially tricky task of reverse-parking a Lamborghini. The build quality and fit and finish on the early car WIRED tried for size was impressive.
And the name? Revuelto was a fighting bull, a celebrity in the arenas of Barcelona in the 1880s. By all accounts, he was quite a character, but the closest English translation is “mixed up.” “We thought it was a good way of explaining how we’ve blended the two souls of this car,” Stephan Winkelmann says. “We will always be better in terms of performance than the generation before, but we will also be more sustainable. If we want to continue to be a super-sports-car manufacturer, we have to adapt, we have to find solutions.”
As interim steps on the path to full electrification go, the Revuelto seems persuasive. Mixed-up in one sense, laser-focused in plenty of others.
