The successor to Bugatti’s Chiron hypercar had already been confirmed to feature a naturally aspirated V16 engine, but the marque’s boss has now locked in hybrid assistance for the upcoming model.
Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac – who is also the founder of electric hypercar specialist Rimac – provided more detail on the model’s drivetrain in a video uploaded to YouTube, just a handful days ahead of its unveiling.
“I felt like the right thing was to have a combustion engine, and it should be as emotional as possible,” Mr Rimac said.
“For mean, that means naturally aspirated with no turbos, but without having turbos you don’t have the raw power and torque that the W16 quad-turbo (Veyron and Chiron) engine has.
“So how do you deal with those two conflicting things? Luckily we are experts in ultra-high performance electric powertrains, so the idea was complementing the ‘old school’ combustion engine with a very high performance electric powertrain.
“So one electric motor in the rear, two in the front and quite a substantial battery pack with 25kWh that delivers the power but also usable electric powertrain when you need it.
“The electric powertrain is actually an enabler for such an emotional engine, because without it we wouldn’t have this performance”.
Mate Rimac
Mr Rimac stopped short of providing any details about power and torque outputs, and we don’t yet know how large the V16 engine is – but we know how good it sounds.
For context, Bugatti’s 8.0-litre W16 quad-turbo engine was capable of producing up to 1361kW of power and 1850Nm of torque.
The all-electric Rimac Nevera hypercar develops 1408kW and 2360Nm from its four electric motors, which power each wheel individually.
Though many expected the next Bugatti to be all-electric after Rimac took a 55 per cent stake in the brand – with the remaining 45 per cent held by Porsche – Mr Rimac said doing so would have been akin to taking the easy path.
“There were many naysayers, saying the next car has to be electric or ‘you don’t have the experience to build a hypercar’”, Mr Rimac said.
Rimac Nevera
“‘It’s way too complicated, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, or how are you going to develop a combustion engine car? You have never done this before.’
“My answer was: ‘I haven’t done anything before whatever I have done in the last 15 years.’ We had no right to do any of that, especially starting in a country that didn’t have a car industry.
“So we had confidence that we could do it together with the colleagues from Bugatti after joining forces.”
Bugatti’s as-yet unnamed hypercar is due to be revealed on June 20, European time.
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