“Electrification is the future.
” Today, the automobile industry is standing at a new turning point, and everyone who is closely related to the car is witnessing this profound transformation with the name of electricity as the core.
This change not only redefines the car, which has been born for 138 years, but also has a profound impact on people’s travel mode, consumption concept and economic development model.
More importantly, the wave of electrification is sweeping in with an almost irresistible force, scouring every corner of the market segment, and no car company has the right to “exempt”.
So these traditional giants began to act, from multinational giants such as Volkswagen Toyota to launch pure electric series, to luxury brands such as BBA and Porsche to accelerate the launch of new energy models.
Even supercars that regard gasoline as “poison” have been electrocuted one after another, paving the way for electrification.
This is a new “battle” and it is a new starting point for everyone.
Therefore, when Mr.
Francesco Scardaoni, head of Lamborghini Asia Pacific, said the sentence at the beginning of the article, I already felt Lamborghini’s firm determination to electrify the future.
Last year the Italian supercar maker officially launched its first hybrid sports car Revuelto in the run-up to its 60th birthday.
A year later, Urus SE, the mixed version of the Lamborghini super SUV Urus family, took the opportunity to communicate its steady progress in electric plans.
There are no shortcuts at the top of the pyramid, and electrification is like a torrent in front of the major car companies, and no one can easily cross it.
A lot of people must have been watching the market performance of Porsche Q1 recently, as the Stuttgart luxury brand reported its worst quarterly results since it went public, with a decline in both global sales and profits.
and the decline in China is even more striking.
Porsche is one of the many luxury brands with a relatively fast electrified transformation.
As early as 2018, Porsche’s first pure electric model, the Taycan, was officially unveiled.
However, in the process of developing the pure electricity market, it did not seem to meet expectations.
Porsche’s sales in China began to decline continuously from 2022 to 2023, and global sales only increased slightly in the same year.
In the change of the times, it is obvious that electrification is becoming a new weapon, giving more Chinese brands the strength to move to the high end of the market and to the top of the pyramid of the automobile industry.
At the same time, it also makes China’s auto market gradually fade away its former immaturity and realize the transfer of pricing power in disorder.
These changes also make the importance of the Chinese market more unique.
Not only Porsche, or luxury brands such as BBA, but even ultra-luxury brands are re-examining the world’s largest car market.
In fact, it is not just Porsche, but the more high-end market positioning of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce also show a “biased phenomenon” in China.
Overall sales of these ultra-luxury brands hit record highs in the global market in 2023, except in China.
In the case of Lamborghini, for example, 2023 was the best year in Lamborghini’s history, with brand sales exceeding 10, 000 for the first time, delivering a total of 10112 new cars, up from 9200 in 2022.
But sales in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau fell 173 to 845, down 17 per cent from a year earlier.
In China, the electrification transformation is spreading rapidly, all brands have accelerated the launch of related products, but also spawned a number of new energy brands, constantly opening up fertile ground in the market.
But at the top of the market, ultra-luxury brands have shown a different reaction, does it mean that the Chinese market’s influence on the world is weakening? In this regard, Mr.
Francesco Scardaoni, head of Lamborghini Asia Pacific, and Mr.
Konstantin Sychev, Executive General Manager of mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, both said that not only Lamborghini or any supercar brand, but everyone understands the importance of the Chinese market to the global development of brands.
And Lamborghini’s strategy for China has not changed.
Although sales have declined slightly, the Chinese market is still Lamborghini’s largest market in the Asia-Pacific region and the third largest in the world last year, occupying an important position.
Facing the future, Lamborghini will also invest more to further expand the Chinese market.
“volatility in the market is temporary,” Mr.
Francesco Scardaoni added.
To be exact, as the representative of the top supercar brand, Lamborghini should also belong to the category of luxury goods, the industry practice is to provide products based on the demand of a single market, and Lamborghini does the same.
But similarly, the luxury industry is also cyclical, so the ups and downs of sales seem quite normal.
Facing the future, Lamborghini obviously wants to take the initiative in his own hands, electrification is the only way, and for these supercar brands, there are no shortcuts, everything is a new exploration.
Electrification also needs precipitation.
In 2023, Lamborghini’s sales in the Chinese market did not maintain the trend of growth, leading many “onlookers” to give a superficial opinion that top luxury cars are difficult to adapt to China’s rapid electrification transformation.
In the face of change, Lamborghini held the global debut of the new Urus SE in China on the eve of this year’s Beijing Auto Show, which is a clear sign.
Although Lamborghini failed to achieve a new breakthrough in sales in China last year due to the impact of the overall market, Lamborghini still maintained its market share in the super SUV segment and increased its market share in the Supercar segment.
More importantly, the new Urus SE is the second conventional model with plug-in hybrid technology after the Revuelto, which also marks the beginning of the electric era of the Urus, an important vehicle series.
At the end of 2017, Lamborghini launched its first high-performance SUV Urus based on a concept model.
As the third series of Lamborghini production models, the launch of the Urus is a powerful complement to the brand’s existing supercar models and allows Lamborghini to shift to a larger commercial market.
In 2020 Urus sold a total of 4407 units accounting for 53.
3% of the total Lamborghini sales and became the well-deserved “seller” within the brandQuantity and responsibility “.
In 2023, Lamborghini’s annual sales exceeded the 10,000 mark for the first time, with 6087 Urus deliveries, that is, six out of every 10 Lamborghini cars sold were Urus.
With the success of Urus, the entire super SUV market ushered in new machines, including the Aston Martin DBX, Ferrari Purosangue and other models, bringing a variety of options to this market.
With the launch of the new Urus SE, Lamborghini took the lead in completing the new energy transformation in this market segment, and planted a seed for the evolution of pure electric models in the future.
Interestingly, although it is the brand’s second hybrid model, Mr.
Francesco Scardaoni said that the new Urus SE and Revuelto have nothing in common and that the two cars achieve a completely different purpose of hybrid.
The hybrid of Revuelto is designed to further improve the performance of vehicles, while the hybrid of Urus SE not only enhances performance, but also further improves the performance of daily driving.
From the product point of view, the new Urus SE can achieve a pure electric range of 60 kilometers, and its commuting performance is closer to those of those household PHEV models, while the comprehensive power of 800hp also allows this super SUV to enjoy itself on the track, looking more like a hexagonal soldier as a whole.
In the history of Lamborghini development, it has experienced large and small changes, and electrification is obviously the most important and critical one.
Urus SE is an important part of the electric strategic planning of Lamborghini’s “moving towards the Heart of Taurus (Direzione Cor Tauri)”.
Next, the successor model of Hurac á n will also appear in the form of hybrid, and Lamborghini will complete the full hybrid of the model.
In order to maintain the “Bull” brand DNA in the process of electrification, Lamborghini will insist on creating the most appropriate power system for each model, and adhere to the “not the earliest, but the best” attitude, and strive to better pass on the characteristics of the brand.
Especially in the field of pure electricity, when it comes to the value of precipitation, Lamborghini’s first all-electric model will not be unveiled until 2028. Mr. Francesco Scardaoni said that launching an all-electric model is not an easy task because it is a new era and more time is needed to design and explore the positioning of the Lamborghini brand in the electrified field.
Take the Lanzador concept car as an example, it has obvious Lamborghini characteristics in terms of design, manipulation and sound, which is the most important cornerstone.
It is a bit of a pity that considering that the Ferrari next door has just launched the 12Cilindri without any motor assistance and with a naturally aspirated V12 engine, Lamborghini may not launch a new model with the same form of power, because they are ready for a new future and have a stronger belief than any of their rivals.
The future has come, the door of a new era of the automobile industry is slowly opening, it will also be an era full of driving passion, there will also be a unique Lamborghini, and once again leave a strong color in the history of the automobile industry.
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