Yahoo Autos The Lamborghini Lanzador Is Not for Current Lamborghini Customers
The Lamborghini Lanzador concept was one of Monterey Car Week's biggest surprises. Not because we weren't expecting the company to bring an all-electric grand tourer concept to Monterey, but because we weren't expecting it to look so out-of-left-field funky. That was on purpose, says company chief technical officer Rouven Mohr.
"A lot of people expected [a more traditional grand tourer], for sure," Mohr told Road & Track at The Quail during Monterey Car Week. "Everyone had in their minds a kind of more classical GT interpretation."
What we got, though, was far from that: A kind of coupe-like crossover with two doors and four seats, complete with a tall ride height and plenty of room for luggage.
"We want to address a new style and also a new audience with this car," Mohr said. "We are not so oriented to the past in saying, 'Ok, now we'll make another classical GT like all the others have already.'"
Mohr said none of Lamborghini's current customers were asking for a car like the Lanzador. But the company believes in the concept, and dove head-first into an entirely new segment that defies classification. Is the Lanzador a grand tourer? Is it a crossover? Is it a sports car? Lamborghini wants it to be all three.
"It's a little bit brave for us to say, 'Ok, we believe in it,"'And we do it," Mohr said. "For instance, the Huracán Sterrato. No one was asking for this kind of car. At the beginning, everyone was saying, 'Oh come on, what is this? This is shit. What do you do with this?' Now, the people, especially if they have already experienced the driving style, love it."
Lamborghini is putting a huge effort into honing the driving style for its first production EV, says Mohr. What makes an electric vehicle a Lamborghini will come through software.
"To be honest, this is one of our most important development targets, to redefine the electric behavior of a Lambo," Mohr said. "The people expect a Lamborghini to be a little bit more rude, a little bit more, let me say, not so smooth, and so on. Because a lot of electric cars have the performance, this is not the differentiation. At the moment, we are redefining exactly this behavior and there are a lot of ideas."
The software in question is called Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata, or LDVI. It's a dynamics control system that uses a suite of sensors and actuators to adjust the driver's experience, using feedback from inputs to change things like torque distribution and vectoring.
"We can, for the first time, implement functions that are even not thinkable in a combustion car," Mohr said. "For instance, we are already working on torque vectoring that—with paddle shifters, that during the driving—you can influence the torque vectoring. And that's only one feature. We have a lot of these. I strongly believe these kinds of features make the electric driving cool. Not the fact if you are from zero to 60, in 1.7, 1.8, or 2.1, because you cannot perceive a difference. We are working especially on the focus. What is the maximum emotional version of electric driving? And this has to be a Lambo."
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