Lamborghini’s first EV is nearly ready — but are we?

“The sun is really dangerous!” Rouven Mohr said as we ducked into some shade behind Lamborghini’s booth at The Quail, a Monterey Car Week event filled with some of the world’s most deep-pocketed buyers. Just a few feet away, surrounded by a crowd of hundreds, was the company’s just-unveiled Temerario super sports car, emerald paint gleaming in the California sun. Mohr, Lamborghini’s CTO since 2022, has an infectious grin breaking through the extra layer of sunscreen he’s just applied. 

“It’s your baby, and then to see it for the first time on the stage, it’s always special,” he said.

The car’s development began four and a half years ago, kicking into high gear 36 months ago ahead of its debut this past weekend. The Temerario replaces the decade-old Huracán, Lamborghini’s outgoing V10 super sports car. Over the years, it has been upgraded numerous times, gaining power, handling, and technology along the way, but the new Temerario makes it look remedial.

Though the Temerario steps down to a 4.0-liter V8, it adds a pair of turbochargers. That configuration sounds a bit like the Audi-sourced engine inside the company’s Urus SUV, but Mohr is adamant that this is unrelated. “It is totally new,” he said. “There is nothing, not any part to do with the V8 of the Urus.”

Lamborghini developed this new engine to do two things: rev to 10,000rpm and sound amazing.

The result is a car with a distinct spine-tingling scream when driven hard. But the feel of the engine is also unique. “When you drive the car at the beginning, you tend to shift up much too early because you have a lot of torque. But if you rev it up, to be honest, you feel it’s a kind of explosion because the torque is still there that in a naturally aspirated one you don’t have,” Mohr said. 

Adding turbochargers might add torque, but they don’t necessarily increase the fun factor. The engine relies on turbos that Mohr called “huge.” Big turbos make big power but often result in a lag between putting your foot on the accelerator and the forward surge of the car. 

That’s where the hybrid system comes in. The Temerario has three axial flux electric motors. A pair live on the front axle, one driving each front wheel. The third is directly connected to the crankshaft of the new V8.

The total system output is 907 horsepower and 538 pound-feet of torque, up from 631 horsepower and 417 pound-feet in the outgoing Huracán. The combined output of the hybrid system alone is 295 horsepower, or about the same as a single-motor Polestar 2. The Temerario accelerates from zero to 62mph in 2.7 seconds, with a top speed of over 210mph.

On paper, it’s an architecture similar to Lamborghini’s other hybrid, the 1,001 horsepower Revuelto. In fact, Mohr said the dual-motor front axle setup is exactly the same as the Revuelto’s, as is the 3.8kWh battery.

But the differing characteristics of the two cars mean less software sharing between them than you might think. “The basic strategy is the same, but the application is a completely different one because the weight distribution is different, the track, the wheelbase,” he said.

Still, the Temerario shares many of the Revuelto’s high-performance tricks, like using the hybrid system for traction control. 

Imagine accelerating too hard out of a corner. In your overexuberance, the rear wheels start to spin. Rather than the traction control reducing power to maintain grip, as on a normal car, the Temerario will increase regen on that rear electric motor. The motor then converts that extra power from the V8 into charge for the battery while simultaneously keeping you from spinning into a ditch.

The Temerario looks brilliant sitting in the sun at Lamborghini’s booth, but something is missing this year: the all-electric Lanzador concept that debuted last year. It was a bit of an odd thing, a tall coupe with SUV-like proportions and an unconventional design that was a throwback to the company’s earlier four-seat coupes like the Espada of the ’60s or the Jarama of the ’70s.

Though it’s just a concept, it was said to be a preview of an eventual production EV, and Mohr said its development is still actively underway. “On this, we are still full-throttle working,” he said. 

The target for the release of the Lanzador is sometime toward the end of the decade, but Mohr said that timeframe isn’t just a question of engineering. “It depends a little bit also on the market,” he said.

In other words, Lamborghini is waiting for the EV market to stabilize. Mohr said that high depreciation rates on premium EVs have product planners scared. Residual values are key for cars costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unlike your average SUV, these extremely rare cars often gain value as soon as they roll off the dealership lot. Many owners literally bank on that. 

A Lamborghini EV that quickly loses value would be unacceptable. “In some regions of the world, the people are a little bit scared about the residual values and all the things that are important for us,” Mohr said.

The Rolls-Royce Spectre will be a bit of a litmus test for this new era of ultra-premium EVs, he noted, but it’s too early to know how that one will fare in the market in the long term.

Wealthy buyers still have a long way to go before the Lanzador has its true moment in the sun. Until then, they’ll have to be sated with the Temerario, which should be available sometime next year. Lamborghini hasn’t set a price yet on the car, but given the outgoing Huracán starts at around $250,000, you can be sure the Temerario will extend well into the $300,000 territory.

And what about that name? Like many Lamborghinis, it’s borrowed from a bull — a bull from 1975, in fact. “We picked his name because he was very brave,” Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann said at the car’s unveiling.

It’s not a name that easily rolls off the tongue, even for Mohr. “I am also not Italian speaking, so also for me, it’s not so easy,” he said with a laugh. “I was training at the beginning in front of the mirror. Temerario. Temerario…”