New Lamborghini Urus coming in 2029, and it’ll have a V8
The next Urus is set to be designed and developed in the mould of the hugely popular current generation
Auto Express can confirm that development is now well under way on the all-new second-generation Lamborghini Urus that’s slated to arrive in 2029, packing plug-in hybrid V8 power just like the incredibly popular current iteration of the flamboyant super-SUV.
While Ferrari and Aston Martin created bespoke architectures for their rival SUVs, Lamborghini will continue to utilise technology shared with the wider Volkswagen Group in the next Urus. This will be a new version of the PPC platform being developed by Audi for its Q7, plus the next Bentley Bentayga. It’ll also be utilised by a next-generation ICE-powered Porsche Cayenne and the forthcoming Audi Q9.
PPC, in effect, is a heavily modified version of the MLB Evo architecture from the current Urus, and the advances it offers should allow the new model to be more dynamic, more efficient and even more powerful. For context, the latest Urus SE already spits out nearly 800bhp.
In an interview with Auto Express, Stefano Cossalter, product director for the Urus, said: “It’s no secret that the VW Group has those platforms and it’s a way to get access to good technology.”
Referencing Lamborghini’s sway in the direction of these technologies, he told us: “Of course we are influencing the development of some components for the future, because we have our technology roadmaps now for all the main items which are very, very important for the car, like dampers, for instance.
“So we are sitting together with the suppliers to understand what they have in mind and what we need, because we need to steer their development to create solutions together.”
However, he added that with competitors all over the world having access to these same components, “the real difference is the driving dynamic controls and the software we’re developing in-house. The magic is putting it all together and getting this amplitude into the driving of the car.”
Cossalter continued: "At the end of the day, besides the hardware, the big difference is the software and the predictive software we are putting into the car to understand what the car is going to do next to improve the steering, the cornering, the braking and the acceleration.”
This suggests the Italian brand is continuing to develop the ‘predictive logic’ software and LDVI (Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata) supercomputer that it’s been using in its supercars for the past several years.
In case there’s anyone out there hoping there will be a fully-electric version of the next Urus, the brand’s CEO Stephan Winkelmann told us, after some analysis, there is simply “no way that we are going to do the Urus as a BEV” for the moment. That explains why it’s sticking with plug-in hybrid power, which also provides a link between the big luxury SUV and Lambo’s latest supercars: the 907bhp Temerario and 1,001bhp Revuelto.
The Urus reportedly accounts for more than half of Lamborghini’s sales, but its importance to the brand goes far beyond that. “The Urus was especially in the beginning a conqueror car and we counted about 80% of customers were new to the brand,” Cossalter told us.
“What we noticed is that a lot of those customers were not considering our super sports car before. But the moment they bought an Urus, they said: ‘Oh, why not! I’ll go for a Temerario’ or ‘Let's go for a Revuelto!’, you name it.
“And we see that there’s a lot of loyalty. Once they're getting in with the Urus, they’re buying and rebuying Lamborghini products. With the Urus SE, around 60% are new conquests and 40% are repeaters, which are very important for us.”
We’re still a few years away from the next-generation Urus arriving of course, so not surprisingly there’s a new version of the current model on the horizon, to keep the Italian heavyweight at the top of its game.
What we suspect is the new Urus Performante has been spotted testing and should be arriving later this year. However, when asked if this would be the swansong for the current generation, Cossalter slyly replied: “We will see. But nobody knows exactly what is going to happen in the future.”
If you don’t want to wait to get a Lamborghini Urus, there are several used examples available through the Auto Express Buy A Car service with prices starting from under £160,000...
