Lamborghini CEO on Going All-Electric: “We Don’t Need to Decide Now"

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Lamborghini will spend more than $1.8 billion to build hybrid versions of its rowdy Italian SUV and powerful supercars by 2024. But the proposed hybrids are likely to be paltry compared to the volume of throaty V12 engines for which the 59-year-old brand is famous for producing. Last year, Lamborghini recorded its best sales results ever, with 8,405 cars delivered globally. And company executives have yet to specify when—if ever—they will focus only on electric vehicles.

“We don't need to decide now,” said Lamborghini Chairman and CEO Stephan Winkelmann during a reporter roundtable July 27 when asked whether the company was planning to switch its fleet to only electric vehicles, as brands like Audi and Bentley have pledged. “We have at least a few years to decide.” In the meantime, Lamborghini has announced that its first EV, a two-door, four-seat vehicle, will arrive in eight years, by 2030.

It was a frank admission from a company that seems comfortable in its own skin—even at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur when it comes to green-minded driving.

Most other automakers have already committed to going electric and are making it a signature of their marketing efforts—even if there is disagreement among executives behind closed doors about the best way to do it. Bentley boasts that every vehicle it builds will be battery-electric by 2030; Audi says it will end development of combustion engines by 2026. Even Ferrari already has a decade of knowledge building hybrids. Rolls-Royce will debut its first-ever electric vehicle this fall.

Lamborghini, on the other hand, asserts that at this point, all-electric all the time may not be the answer.

“It is going to be very, very complicated to make the right choice,”