2024 Lamborghini Revuelto First Drive: The Ultimate Hybrid Costs $600,000
I confess to being skeptical when Lamborghini announced its long-awaited Aventador successor. That big V12 had been on the market for 12 years, a long time even for a Lamborghini in the modern era. There was much to do about its Revuelto replacement being a hybrid, but that didn't bother me.
I was more concerned about the size of the thing. Even after years of refinement, the final Aventador was a big car, and it feels like it. The Revuelto gains more than three inches in wheelbase and, more significantly, increases by nearly 500 pounds in weight. That's movement in the wrong direction, in my book.
But, after a day of wheeling one around a race track in Italy, not far from where this $600,000, 1,001-horsepower hypercar is built, I must confess my fears were misplaced. The new Revuelto not only feels lighter and more agile, but it's also significantly more fun, too.
Hypercar hybrid
1,001 horsepower is a remarkable figure. While the Revuelto comes with a big, 6.5-liter V12, the same displacement as the Aventador, here that lump provides 814 horsepower and 535 lb-ft of torque.
The rest comes from a trio of electric motors. The first is situated at the rear, a traditional, radial-flux unit directly connected to the Aventador's new 8-speed, dual-clutch transmission. That motor adds 148 horsepower to the mix and 111 lb-ft of torque. Perhaps more significantly, it enables a remarkable new regen-focused stability control system that I'll detail in a moment.
Up front lies not one but two more motors, one spinning each of the front wheels. Each of these offers again 148 horsepower but, thanks to their axial-flux design, delivers significantly more torque: 258 lb-ft. In the middle of the car sits a 3.8 kWh battery pack, running along the tunnel where the driveshaft responsible for spinning the front wheels would normally run.
There's no driveshaft here, because there's no mechanical connection between the V12 and the front wheels. The all-wheel drive is exclusively provided by those electric motors.
A V12 range extender?
The 3.8 kWh of that battery pack is only enough to drive the Revuelto an estimated 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, according to Lamborghini. If you're looking for an emissions-free commuter, this is not your car. In fact, the sheer act of charging the Revuelto will be needlessly inconvenient: for some reason, Lamborghini decided to put the charge port inside the frunk, only a slight step above the insanity of Apple putting the Magic Mouse 2 charge port on the bottom.
Having to leave the frunk open while you charge means you're not likely to see a Revuelto ever juicing up at a destination charger. But most Revueltos will probably never be charged externally at all, if only because they're so very good at charging themselves. With the three-motor hybrid system, the Revuelto can not only harvest energy from the front wheels when braking, but it can also recharge the battery from the V12.
Even when you're running hot laps on a race track at full-throttle, the Revuelto is able to sip some energy from the V12 to recharge the battery. Instead of a traditional traction control system, which cuts fuel or ignition to the engine when wheelspin is detected, the Revuelto ramps up the regen on that rear electric motor. That has the same effect of mitigating wheelspin while also putting juice back in the battery pack, ready to help accelerate you out of the next corner.
Quadruple power
Those motors are tuned for big power and big torque, and you can definitely feel it. The 6.5-liter V12 in the Revuelto revs up to 9,250 rpm, and given that, you'd think it might be lacking in low-down torque. You'd never know it. The car absolutely surges out of corners at any speed, electric motors giving you the kind of throttle response that EV owners love.
But, as the speed piles on and the V12 hits its stride, the acceleration is paired with the sublime rush of a big engine and its intoxicating song. That combination of power delivery and sound is utterly addictive and worth the price of entry alone.
But the hybrid system here isn't just providing that initial power. By having two electric motors, the Revuelto can vector torque across the front axle. That means it can actively pull you through and around a corner, helping this big Lambo to mitigate any understeer that you might expect from a traditional all-wheel-drive system. But the tricks don't end there.
Rear-steering works its magic
Thanks to a new rear-wheel steering system, at high speed, the rears turn inline with the fronts to create more stability. But, more important for a car that's gained three inches over the Aventador's already prodigious wheelbase, those wheels can turn counter to the fronts in tighter turns. The effect is of virtually shortening that wheelbase again.
It sounds overly complicated, but the result is astonishingly effective. The Revuelto turns and dives into tight corners so eagerly that, for my first few laps behind the wheel at speed, I constantly had to unwind the steering wheel before I got to the apex. The car was responding far more aggressively than I was expecting.
The feeling was borderline nervous at first, but as I got more comfortable, I was able to really push the Revuelto. Its responses to the steering are so quick, so effective, it felt like playing Gran Turismo. The car simply did what I wanted, cutting through the turns and then surging out of them with just enough slip from the rear axle to remind you that this is still a rear-biased car and a brilliantly fun one at that.
And the final performance improvement over the Aventador is the transmission. The Aventador made do with a clunky, automated manual transmission that bucked and kicked like its namesake bull. The new, eight-speed dual-clutch unit on the Revuelto still has a personality, still provides a bit of a punch when you grab another gear at top speed, but it's not so whiplash-inducing as before. It's a significant upgrade.
Improved creature comforts
The improvements in the Revuelto aren't just focused on performance. The day-to-day side of things, too, starting as soon as you open those scissor doors — which, yes, still swing to the sky just as they should. Lamborghini has pulled in the side sills, meaning there's less of a stretch across the bottom of the car to get yourself into the seat. Once you're there, you'll find more headroom, too. Though a big car, the Aventador wasn't exactly comfortable for taller folk, especially when wearing a helmet.
The Revuelto has one inch higher roof, which gave me just enough room to get comfortable when situated on the track.
The interior is not only roomier but fancier, with a new level of design and attention to detail that's a step above what we've seen from Lamborghini before. There's also significantly more technology at play, including a triple-display layout. The primary interface is a portrait-oriented touchscreen, 8.4 inches on the diagonal, through which you control most things. (And, yes, it supports both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, wirelessly even.) To the right is another display for the passenger, and then the 12.3-inch gauge cluster on the left, which is also fully digital.
Interestingly, all three are interconnected and can share visual widgets of a sort. Want to show off how many Gs your car is pulling through the corners? Bring that up on the central display and, with two fingers, fling it off to the right. It'll then show up on the passenger display. Want to see the status of the car's active safety system on the gauge cluster? Fling that to the left.
And, yes, there actually is an active safety system here, including automatic emergency braking and even adaptive cruise control.
The complete package
The Lamborghini Revuelto is a remarkable package. Though bigger and heavier than the Aventador, it's far more playful and engaging on the track. It's also brutally quick, has incredible speed, and even boasts a comprehensive tech suite for both convenience and safety.
Sure, the plug-in nature of the hybrid system feels like a hollow gesture, something that even Lamborghini doesn't seem to think anyone will use. But, even without a plug, the combination of motors and batteries is so effective it's hard to harbor any ill will towards it.
This is proof that Lamborghini's embrace of technology and next-generation powertrains is not a token gesture. The Revuelto is legitimately fantastic, and worth every penny of its more than $600,000 MSRP.