Lamborghini is hopeful that it can extend the life of its internal combustion engines through the use of advanced synthetic fuels.
While the Volkswagen Group as a whole is diving head-first into electrification, Porsche is already manufacturing synthetic fuels with Siemens Energy and during a recent interview with Drive, Lamborghini said it is going down a similar route.
“We’re … keeping the door open for internal-combustion engines with synthetic fuel,” Lamborghini’s Asia Pacific Region manager Francesco Scardaoni said in a recent interview. “So the ideal scenario will be to have the pure-electric cars – like the fourth model we will introduce in 2028 – and the super-sports cars, possibly with internal combustion engines running with synthetic fuel. That would be the ideal scenario. So that we still have the pure DNA of super-sports cars for Lamborghini, the drivability of an internal-combustion engine, the emotion in a super-sports car.”
Scardaoni added that the Italian car manufacturer only recently started the project and is working alongside an oil company. Interestingly, he said that Lamborghini’s synthetic fuel program is unique to what Porsche is doing.
Read More: Lamborghini Looks To Synthetic Fuel To Keep Combustion Engines Alive Beyond 2030
“We’re running on [a] parallel path right now,” he said. “We are investing on our own synthetic fuel channel and Porsche is doing as well … We wanted to have our own way to design and develop this potential way to keep our engines alive. But we … just kicked off the overall plan, the total investment. So we are still far away. Porsche is much more advanced.”
If Lamborghini does use synthetic fuels in future models, its combustion-powered vehicles will likely also use hybridization to further improve efficiency, rather than going down the turbocharged route of its rivals. Scardaoni said a key reason for this is that Lamborghini wants to retain the iconic soundtracks that its engines are known for.
“The beauty of having a hybrid system is also to still have the sound of the engine,” he said. “This of course will be a bridge into a new era that can be either electrified or with synthetic fuel. So the reason why we wanted to start with the hybridised powertrain is to keep the sound of the engines alive.”
