Lamborghini Lanzador to combine sports car thrills with SUV styling – and it won’t be electric
The Lamborghini Lanzador will go into production in the coming years, but unlike the concept version unveiled in 2023, it will turn its back on electric power in favour of a plug-in hybrid set-up.
Positioned as a 2+2 ‘ultra’ grand tourer, the Lanzador will bridge the gap between Lamborghini’s sports car lineup and its only SUV model, the Urus. That model will remain as the sole SUV in the Italian brand’s lineup, with no plans to expand despite the growing popularity of sports SUVs on the market.
In an interview with What Car?, Stefano Cossalter, product director for the Urus and Lanzador, said: “[The Lanzador is] going to be something crazy like all Lamborghinis are, but it’s going to be something in the middle between a super sports car and an SUV.”
Despite having originally been conceptualised as a fully electric car, the Lanzador will actually go into production as a PHEV following Lamborghini’s decision to delay the introduction of an EV into its model lineup – a decision which came after Lamborghini realised its customer-base was not in the market for a fully electric car.
“There was little to no acceptance by our customers. There was no interest; they were not willing to buy an electric car,” Cossalter explained. “We believe that, at the moment, the technology is not mature enough.”
He added: “You can get a lot of precision, a lot of power, a lot of torque [from an EV]. The car is really fast, but not emotional. You are completely missing the emotion. And, at the end of the day, the reason why you are buying a Lamborghini is because you want to have some emotion.”
The Lanzador will sit below the Urus when it eventually arrives, and it’s expected to use a variant of its larger sibling’s 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 plug-in hybrid set-up. It’s not clear when the production Lanzador will arrive on the market, but it might not be until the end of the decade, as Lamborghini prepares the PHEV unit.
Similarly, Cossalter confirmed there are no plans to introduce an all-electric power option to the Urus, despite rivals heading in that direction. For example, the Porsche Cayenne – to which the Urus was closely related, when the Cayenne was in its previous generation – recently introduced an all-electric variant on new underpinnings, while Ferrari and Bentley are entering into the EV era with new electric models imminently.
“We are in a good position because I believe we really found the proper way to hybridise sports cars,” explained Cossalter. “Even the Revuelto [supercar], which is a hybrid car, that's a really fun-to-drive car. And this is where we are taking the technology and driving it down to the Urus.”
That’s not to say that Lamborghini’s electric ventures are fully off the table, though. Following the launch of the Lanzador, it’s expected that the Italian brand will launch its first EV, with development still underway.
“We didn't stop the development of electric technology,” said Cossalter. “So this is still running. We're working on cell chemistry. We're working on software for maybe an upcoming electric car, so we think we are in a good position. Everything we are developing could be used on a hybrid car as well.”
Any fully electric Lamborghini likely won’t arrive until after 2030, though, and there’s no steer on what it might look like – but with no current plans to expand the brand’s SUV lineup, it could take a traditional low-slung two-seat shape (à la Lotus Evija), or take on the upcoming Ferrari Luce as a grand tourer.
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