2007 Lamborghini Gallardo on 2040-cars

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As VW electrifies, it questions the role of Lamborghini, Bugatti, Ducati

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen needs to change to stay relevant in the electric and digital vehicle era and will announce "important steps" to that end before the close of the year, Chief Executive Herbert Diess said on Wednesday. "Volkswagen needs to change: From a collection of valuable brands and fascinating combustion-engine products that thrill customers with superb engineering — to a digital company that reliably operates millions of mobility devices worldwide," Diess told shareholders at the company's virtual general meeting. Vehicles need to stay in contact with customers, offer new services and comfort functions on a weekly or even daily basis, he said. "We will take further important steps to set the course for this in the rest of 2020," Diess said. Senior executives told Reuters the company is reviewing what role its high-performance brands Lamborghini, Bugatti and Ducati will play as the company increasingly focuses on electric, digital and autonomous vehicles. Volkswagen, which also owns VW, Audi, Porsche, Seat and Skoda, is looking at whether it has the resources to accelerate development of electric platforms for smaller brands at a time it is investing billions to transform its more mainstream cars. Asked whether Ducati, which is known for making noisy combustion-engined motorbikes, has an electric future, Markus Duesmann, who oversees research and development for the group, said: "It will not take long until we see an electric Ducati." Whether Ducati, which is a medium-sized premium motorbike brand, would offer an electric variant, depends on whether a bike could offer range comparable to a combustion-engined variant, Duesmann said. Advances are being made in battery technology which could make this possible, he added. Separately Frank Witter, the company's chief financial officer, in response to a question about whether a sale of Lamborghini is planned, said Volkswagen does not comment on speculation about potential divestments. Lamborghini's Chief Executive Stefano Domenicali this week announced his departure from the sports car maker to take on a new job as president of Formula One. VW needs cash Volkswagen is reviewing the future of these three high-performance brands as part of broader quest for more economies of scale as it shifts to mass producing electric cars, senior executives told Reuters.

Lamborghini confirms Veneno Roadster is coming

As it turns out, there might just be more than three lucky souls on the planet who will be able to claim ownership of a Lamborghini Veneno. While Lamborghini still plans to make triplets out of the winged and vented hypercar, we hear that there is a Veneno Roadster in the works.
Early yesterday, our own Matt Davis caught wind of an open-top Veneno, but Car and Driver has some more details about the car. The article says that a total of nine Veneno Roadsters could be built with each carrying a price tag of around $4.4 million US. If you're keeping track at home, that's a premium of a cool half-million bucks to get the Veneno to go topless, and with all three of the coupes already accounted for, we're sure Lamborghini won't have a hard time unloading the Roadsters.
There is no additional information about the Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, but if we had to guess, we'd figure it will likely use some lightweight removable roof panels like the Aventador Roadster.

Lamborghini has already pre-sold 700 Huracans

It's barely been two months since Lamborghini revealed the new Huracan. The latest ten-cylinder Raging Bull hasn't even had its public debut yet, scheduled to take place next month at the Geneva Motor Show (the same show where McLaren will reveal its new 650S and Ferrari the revised California T). But the Bolognese automaker has already managed to take a whopping 700 orders for the new supercar.
Not that the customers are waving their checkbooks sight unseen, mind you. Over the course of the past month, Lamborghini has been carting pre-production Huracans around the world for VIP clients, 700 of whom have put down their deposits.
To put that number into perspective, consider that in 2012 (the last full year of production), the factory in Sant'Agata built just over 1,200 Gallardos. Assuming Huracan production continues at the same pace, that means Lamborghini already has over half a year's worth of production spoken for. So if you want to get yours anytime in the coming year, you'd better get your deposit in lickety-split.