Lamborghini wants to keep combustion engines alive and sell gas-powered vehicles beyond 2030, CEO Stephan Winkelmann told German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag (via Reuters).
Governments across the world are establishing deadlines to phase out internal combustion engines from consumer vehicles, with some of the earliest bans on the sale of new gas cars slated for 2030.
2022 will be the last year Lamborghini introduces a new vehicle equipped only with an internal combustion engine (ICE), Winkelmann told TechCrunch in an interview earlier this month, where he also revealed that the first all-electric Lamborghini will likely be a two-door coupe.
2023 will mark the start of the Volkswagen-owned supercar maker’s transition to battery-electric, with a “hybridisation” phase set to kick off with the launch of the first plug-in hybrid Lamborghini — the Aventador V12.
But Lamborghini isn’t ready to completely give up gas propulsion just yet. “After hybridisation, we will wait to see whether it will be possible to offer vehicles with an internal combustion engine beyond 2030,” Winkelmann told Welt am Sonntag.
“One possibility would be to keep combustion engine vehicles alive via synthetic fuels.”
The Lamborghini CEO has previously said that the company’s first fully electric car will launch towards the end of this decade.
Lamborghini and other luxury automakers that are known more for the roar of their engines and less for efficiency and pocketable prices, like Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin Lagonda, are still ironing out the specifics of their respective transitions to electric drivetrains, which inherently offer high performance even at non-bank breaking price points.
