VW Group Chairman Martin Winterkorn tells a German tabloid that Bugatti's next hypercar will have a W16 engine plus hybrid boost.
The upcoming Bugatti Chiron, likely to be the fastest supercar in the world, will be available with a hybrid powertrain on top of a regular powertrain with a gasoline engine. The confirmation came from none other than VW Group chairman Martin Winterkorn in an interview with the German tabloid Bild am Sonntag. The lengthy interview was supposed to underline Winterkorn's visionary qualities, which had been questioned by former supervisory board chief Ferdinand Piëch during the brief power struggle for control of the Group that ended in May.
Winterkorn said that the hybrid version will improve performance, thus hinting that reduced consumption is not the driving force behind adding batteries and electric propulsion system to the W-16–powered Veyron successor. At the Vienna engine symposium last month, VW executives confirmed that the Group would continue building W-16 engines. The Chiron is expected to make at least 1360 horsepower, but even more is possible.
The Chiron variant will join the sold-out Porsche 918 Spyder, the Ferrari LaFerrari, and the McLaren P1among this era's hybridized hypercar crowd.
As for what else is shaking at Bugatti, the ultra-powerful Galibier high-performance sedan remains on ice after the design department was unable to provide an aesthetically pleasing solution to packaging a front-mounted W-16 engine. But the project is not entirely dead. Bugatti CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer has hinted that the car could be revisited down the road.
Source :Car and Driver
