Lamborghini Admits That New Models To Be Lighter Rather Than Have Bigger Engines

The battle for supercar supremacy is not about to end soon and unless one company takes over the other, it will never end. This time the battle goes to the homeground of supercars in Italy, not the more famous one but the raging bull from Sant’Agata. It’s no secret that Lamborghini is working on a replacement model for the aged Murcielago and R&D has been underway for a while now.

When you’re in supercar league, everything counts, from the number of cylinders, to how fast gear shifts get done, and of course, horsepower! In an ideal world the simple solution would just be to increase the size of the engine, slap on more cylinders, increase capacity and responsiveness and voila, so much horsepower that the human threshold of withstanding high G’s would be the only restraint. But we live in a world that has been pounded by carbon emissions for decades and its all taking its toll, so in came emissions legislations and out went big, powerful engines.

Company CEO Stephan Winkelmann correctly observes, “It has come to the point where acceleration equals consumption. More consumption means increased CO2 emissions.”

The answer to this is also one of the most important aspects of motorsports – lightweight. And Lamborghini is no stranger to this, R&D chief Maurizio Reggiani explains, “We will use composite materials in the right place, when it also has the right cost, stiffness and mechanical characteristics.”

So in order to keep Lamborghini’s as ragingly fast as they always have been, expect lightweight material like aluminium to replace the heavier steel used previously, along with improved aerodynamics and eerily, a stop/start feature usually found in full hybrid vehicles. Talking about hybrids, there are also rumours going around of full hybrid powertrains for future Lamborghini’s but talk is it won’t happen till the tail-end of this decade. Whatever it is, expect acceleration to be as blistering quick as always but don’t expect speed to go too far beyond the 340km/h mark.

This is also the time where we, fans and enthusiasts sit back and watch supercar makers grapple with the push towards green technology without sacrificing performance. This could just be a decade of innovation and technology for supercars; exciting times indeed.

Source: AutoBlog