At the launch of the new Rs 3.73 crore Lamborghini Huracan EVO, Matteo Ortenzi, Chief Executive Officer, Asia Pacific, Lamborghini spoke with Kushan Mitra

So Matteo how is growth for Lamborghini in the Asia-Pacific region?

It is very good, 2018 was a very good year and 2019 should be a good year too.

How is the Indian market looking for you? The Urus (SUV) has been doing very well here.

It is and I will tell you why. India is a constrained market due to road conditions, if someone wants to drive a sports car he has problems, the Urus is offsetting these problems, that is why this product is closer to developing markets like India. I must say that the Urus is a big success across the world, but even more in the Indian market. And we are seeking more allotment for India as we are anticipating good volumes.

And how are the sportscars doing in India?

Vey well, this is something we are taking care of, we are not forgetting our sportscar because this is the biggest mistake we can do. The Urus is there because we have a lot of sportscars behind us. We are here today because of that, the first market we did the introduction of the Huracan EVO is India. The Urus is a sportscar but as a SUV skin, for us it is very important that every car has the Lamborghini DNA. The EVO is proof of that, the (Huracan) Performante was already very good but we improved all the details on this new one.

Matteo, can you give us an India of how much production has been increasing for Lamborghini? Lamborghini is after all a very exclusive brand.

We have been saying for some time that the Urus was giving us the opportunity ro double our production, and this is becoming the case. Sportscar sales are close to 4000 cars annually, sometimes 3500 depending on model introductions. And we have the same number for Urus, and even if we have big requests for Urus we will stick to that because we want to keep our volume within that range.

And what are Lamborghini’s plans to introduce new drive technologies such as Hybrids and Electrics in cars?

We have seen a vision where these technologies are there but until we believe that performance and feel of the car are not affected, things like the noise we will stick with thermal engines.But for sure in the future we are studying these technologies.

When do you see this happening?

We see a shift through hybridisation can come sooner and later, in the next generation of sportscars lets put it that way…

But your rivals have all moved to hybrid technologies (Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren…)

I cannot speak for my rivals, but what it is Lamborghini and we have to avoid to do just a statement (car) but a real sportscar that is better than the other one. Once we are sure that we can do through hybridisation, then we will do. There are issues like weight, additional performance, durability of performance is still not there. And we do not want to compromise, we want to be the best ones when we speak about emotions and performance. An electric car can do a fantastic 0-100, but when you bring an electric car lets see how many laps it can do?