Volkswagen chief’s 850kW Lamborghini EV clue

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 Toby Hagon 2937 Views

Want to know how powerful Lamborghini’s first EV will be?

Volkswagen chairman Herbert Diess may have given the strongest clue yet that the upcoming hyper EV from the Italian brand may pump out 850kW – or more than 1100 horsepower in the old money.

Delivering a New Auto speech that outlined the company’s plans for the future, the boss of Volkswagen – which owns Lamborghini, as well as brands as diverse as Skoda, Audi, Porsche and Bentley – spoke of a new vehicle architecture that would shared across all the company’s brands.

He said the platform would be flexible to “allow our brands to tailor unique customer experiences fast”.

He also suggested it would be engineered to accommodate power outputs of up to 850kW:

“The mechatronics platform, the next generation of our hardware platforms in the succession of MQB, MLD, MEB and PPE, will allow us to reduce complexity over time as we will consolidate our existing platforms to one architecture for the entire e-product portfolio, from entry level to top of the range, from 85 to 850kW.”

It’s that 850kW figure that’s most interesting.

Sure, Diess may well have been keeping the numbers simple to emphasise the breadth of the architecture – a neat multiple of 10 of the least powerful EV.

But there’s also a fair chance he’s just given a strong clue as to the output of the most powerful future EV from the Volkswagen Group. And that EV is almost certainly a Lamborghini.

Since recently selling Bugatti – previously the brand with the most powerful engines in the Volkswagen stables – it seems logical that the 850kW EV would be used in a Lamborghini, although Porsche is also known for doing plenty of fast cars, including what is currently the fastest EV on Australian roads, the Porsche Taycan.

At 850kW, that would make it one very fast electric car – and comfortably more powerful than anything Lamborghini has done to date.

Lamborghini recently confirmed it would have a pure EV on the road by 2030 and that its entire line-up would be offered as a hybrid by 2024.