Free private fuel station with your Bugatti? Hypercar brand vows to stick with petrol long-term

Hypercar manufacturer Bugatti will continue to build petrol cars for the long-term, with Mate Rimac, CEO of the French brand’s parent company Rimac, suggesting it could even go as far as building synthetic fuel stations at the homes of its super-rich customers. 

Quizzed at the recent FT Future of the Car Summit in London, Rimac declared that petrol engines are here to stay for Bugatti, starting with the Bugatti Chiron replacement being unveiled on 20 June. “I don’t see any reason not to make them beyond 2035, we have developed a completely new engine and we want to use that engine for a while,” he said. “I read the regulations and I don’t see a reason why it would be impossible - the headlines say combustion engined cars will be banned from 2035, but you read the fine print and it doesn’t say that anywhere - you can still build them, but there might be some penalties.”

Bugatti’s exclusive status means its owners can afford to pay the extra charges low-volume brands might incur, and finance new solutions to the issue of more environmental sustainability. “You could even make some beautiful Bugatti fuel stations for the homes of owners, using synthetic fuels,” he continued. 

The all-new replacement for the Chiron doesn’t carry over “one piece’ from the Chiron, or share anything with the Rimac Navera electric hypercar, according to Rimac, who described the exterior design as revolutionary and said the cabin features “some crazy things”.

Rimac also pledged to further enhance the quality of the new Bugatti compared to its predecessors, despite the difficulties attached to low-volume cars. 

“Everyone expects the quality of a mass-produced car in a low-volume car, people think if you pay 10 times or 100 times more for a car that it has to be better, but that’s not the truth,” he explained. “For a normal car, for a BMW 5 Series for example, there will be billions spent, you’ll use more prototypes than the whole production run of a low-volume car to get the quality up.”

“I like to use the analogy of watchmaking,” Rimac continued. “Even if some watches don’t have a transparent cover on the back, you know when you take them apart, that everything's beautiful because people care about it. People make it clear that it's done with precision and quality even if you don't see it. That's what I wanted to do with the new Bugatti; everything to do with it – every little piece, even if you don't see it – is at the absolute highest level.”

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