The automaker’s next generation supercar

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Test Drive: Lamborghini’s 1,001-Horsepower Hybrid Revuelto

The automaker’s next generation supercar

Michael Frank

2 August 2024

Lamborghini now has two hybrids. Confusingly, the first of the duo, the two-seat Revuelto hypercar with 1,001 horsepower, debuted last year—but customers are only now receiving cars in North America, and that means journalists are only now getting seat time in the car. The second, and likely bigger seller, is Lamborghini’s 789-horsepower Urus SE PHEV, a crossover that can travel up to 37 miles on EV power alone. That car has a years-long waiting list, as does the Revuelto, and the Urus SE won’t get to its first hand-raisers for at least several months.

Despite nose-bleeding prices (a quarter million will get you an Urus SE and your Revuelto starts at $600,000) the hybridization of extreme cars like these refutes the belief that electrification cannot work in the lusty world of exceptional performance. We’ve just driven the Revuelto and if anything, it’s a superior hypercar to anything Lamborghini’s done before, precisely because of the way the company has created the powertrain. 

First, this is an all-wheel-drive machine, with a mid-mounted V-12 (just ahead of the rear axle), a rear electric motor and dual electric motors in front. The smallish battery pack fits in the “transmission” tunnel, and the actual transmission is mounted aft of the engine, at the back of the car. All of this means that even though it’s relatively long—four inches longer than the outgoing Aventador flagship and a full foot longer than a 2025 Corvette—the Revuelto’s superior weight distribution and ultrastiff, mostly carbon-fiber body gives it much better twitch. The car feels tighter and lighter. Partially that’s down to perception: Lamborghini’s own data only shows a slight edge to front weight distribution versus the Aventador, and the Revuelto is nearly 500 pounds heavier. But it wears that weight far more comfortably than the older Aventador, a car that always had to be wrung hard to really feel its power. The revelatory Revuelto is just way more fun, even when you’re not flying at surefire, getting-arrested speeds.

There’s another reason for this, beyond the way the powertrain is packaged, which is that electrification is more sophisticated than turbocharging. Forcing air into an engine will eventually lead to speed; electric boost is instantaneous. So while a stat like 0-60 in 2.2 seconds should impress you, the combined nearly 800 ft. lbs. of torque from that massive V-12 behind your head and all three electric motors screaming forward has a brain-melting immediacy Lamborghini couldn’t achieve from forced aspiration. While other carmakers use regenerative braking to recharge EV batteries, Lamborghini didn’t want to interfere with the Revuelto’s natural brake pedal feel. Instead they’re using the deceleration caused by engine braking to fuel the battery, and this was also very purposeful: The engineers didn’t ever want that battery to be fully drained, because it’s critical to the response of the powertrain and how quick the car feels.

Matteo Ortenzi, Lamborghini’s product line director was blunt about several aspects of the car’s development and how and why hybridization and eventual electrification are crucial to get right. He said that facing more stringent emissions standards, especially in Europe and China, are only part of the picture. 

“Nobody ‘needs’ a Revuelto,” he said during an interview after our test drive. “So we have to offer great things and especially new things, new experiences.” Partly, he explained, that’s why Lamborghini is experimenting with a unique soundtrack to the Revuelto when it’s in certain modes, including EV-only, which the driver can use for about five miles of travel. We tested this out and there’s a low whine that builds toward a crescendo that’s heart-racing. 

Ortenzi says they wanted to be sure the driver could hear the car as well as feel it, and that the emotion associated with sound is critical to the impression the driver has of a Lamborghini. 

“But this is for us a first phase. We are really now taking care of what to do in the future for full electric cars. We think this will be one of the major points to transmit emotions when driving electric vehicles,” he says. Ortenzi thinks of the Revuelto and Urus SE as “bridge” cars, and he said the company is in the midst of a deep exploration of emotion and sound—and measuring human response to every aspect of a car’s performance. In an earlier interview with Lamborghini chief technology officer, Rouven Mohr, he broke this down both on a basic level and much more high-brow one. “Our positioning element is always that in every segment to offer the car with the maximum driving fun that you can have,” he said. He added that while a lot of carmakers would execute a Revuelto to deliver the best track times, Lamborghini is on a mission to deliver peak emotion, and they’re currently researching human response to inputs, from pulse rates to dilated pupils to other “non-verbal” responses, such as respiratory rate. 

Some buyers are going to be thrilled by the vehicle even before it’s in motion. Scissoring doors mean you’ll always make an entrance. Inside, there’s chunky metallic “jewelry” the driver gets to toggle—even if that’s likely a stimulant that’s going to wear off. A few rotary switches reside on the steering wheel to soften the suspension dampening or firm it up; to switch up modes from Strada (road) to Corsa (track); and to raise and lower the nose of the car if you’re pulling into a steep driveway. Lamborghini also brackets the ignition beneath a hinged metallic arm, a now seemingly de rigueur element pinched from footage of heroes (and villains) in spy thrillers.   

The Revuelto and subsequent EVs to come at the top of the automotive food chain matter because they’re going to change what we lust after. If Lamborghini cracks the emotional formula with hybrids and EVs next, just as clearly Rivian seems to be doing with its coming R3X, then there’s a bright, interesting and fresh automotive design horizon to look forward to, regardless of the means of propulsion.