Launched at the 2019 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Lamborghini Sian ticked a lot of boxes for Sant’Agata Bolognese. It’s the fastest Lambo ever made and also the first hybrid car to wear the raging bull logo, but it won’t pass on its technology to the upcoming Aventador replacement.
The Lamborghini Sian - renamed to Sian FKP 37 to honor the memory of Ferdinand K. Piech - is the first car to employ a supercapacitor system instead of the run-of-the-mill Lithium-ion battery pack. The solution has been adopted by Lamborghini in the name of performance, but not necessarily range, so it’s not suitable for a whatever will come next after the Aventador. Let us explain.
The supercapacitor technology found inside the Lamborghini Sian is still in its early infancy
In fact, it’s completely new to the car industry, since Lamborghini is the first carmaker to fit it inside a road-going vehicle.
A supercapacitor setup like the available in the Lamborghini Sian is three times more powerful and three times lighter than a battery of the same weight and size.
Together with the electric motor, the entire ensemble tips the scales at just 34 kilograms and delivers 34 horsepower, thus offering an ideal weight-to-power ratio of 1 kg/hp, making it a prime candidate in super-sports cars. However, there’s an Achilles’ heel to it.
Speaking to Australia’s Car Sales, Lamborghini’s chief technical officer Maurizio Reggiani admitted that “at the moment a supercapacitor cannot guarantee that you have the range to do even 5-10 kilometers in full-electric mode” as “the storage is not enough.”
In other words, the technology still needs time to evolve, but it was a perfect match for the Sian because the carmaker aimed at offering “mechanical traction rather than storing electric energy,” thus greet the customers with more performance instead of all-electric range. As you probably know, the Lamborghini Sian delivers 808 horsepower (602 kW), reaches 62 mph (100 km/h) from a standstill in 2.8 seconds, and tops out at over 217 mph (350 km/h).
Lamborghini’s replacement for the Aventador will be a V-12, plug-in hybrid supercar
The same official also indicates that a future Lamborghini Aventador successor will not rely on the same technology found inside the Sian. In fact, Sant’Agata Bolognese’s next flagship is a likely candidate for a plug-in-hybrid powertrain twinned to a Lithium-ion battery, according to Mr. Reggiani. Do we even need to explain why this makes sense? Well, we’ll do it anyway.
For starters, the technology is already there - and by there, we mean the Volkswagen Group, which Lamborghini belongs to. Audi is using it and the same can be said about Porsche (the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid packs 670 horsepower and 850 Newton-meters/627 pound-feet of torque but uses a 4-liter, twin-turbo V-8 as the ICE component).
Secondly, less and less permissive CO2 emissions standards will force every carmaker, Lamborghini included, to adopt a more strict approach when designing future powertrains.
Conversely, a plug-in-hybrid/Lithium-ion battery duo would mean a lot of extra weight, which for a supercar equals to the worst enemy there is. Yet there’s a silver lining in all this: Lamborghini has no intentions of ditching the mighty naturally-aspirated V-12, so the Aventador’s successor will definitely use one.
“If we talk about the Aventador, this is our flagship, and with the naturally aspirated V-12 it represents the perfect marriage. Lamborghini was born with the V-12, and this is the only engine that has remained throughout the entire history of the brand. It must also remain for the future.” Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini CTO
This particular certainty doesn’t apply to Lamborghini’s entry-level supercar. The Huracan might pack a V-10 for the time being, but the company is also looking at the possibility of developing a twin-turbocharged V-8 for the Huracan’s successor. This is, once again, something that the VW Group can provide - the V-8 that Porsche uses in the Panamera Turbo would be a possible option, or even the current V-8 found inside the Urus SUV, with a couple of tweaks here and there.
Even more, such a V-8 could be easily twinned to, let’s say, Porsche’s PDK transmission. This, in turn, falls in line with Mr. Reggiani’s belief that the next-gen Aventador (or whatever name it will wear) should use a dual-clutch gearbox.
Further reading
Read our full review on the 2019 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.
Read our full review on the 2018 Lamborghini Aventador S.
Read our full review on the 2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4.
Source: Carsales.au
