2021 Lamborghini Sián

Lambo’s Most Powerful Road Car Ever Is No Average Hybrid

- Angus MacKenzie

The 2021 Lamborghini Sián will catapult to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds and hit 220 mph, leaving in its wake a shock and awe wall of sound from its 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V-12. The Sián is long and low and extreme, with a menacing, almost alien road presence that signals its status as a tarmac predator ready to pounce and devour random Ferraris. The Sián packs an 807-hp punch, making it the most powerful Lamborghini road car ever built. It’s also Lamborghini’s first hybrid.

Lamborghini will build just 19 roadsters and 63 coupes, to celebrate the company’s founding in 1963. The coupe costs $2.64 million, and 15 are coming to the U.S. No word yet on price for the roadster, U.S. versions of which will arrive between May and December. Finally, its name was amended after its debut to include “FKP 37” to honor late VW Group Chairman Ferdinand Piëch, who was born in 1937. Hybrid hypercars are nothing new. We tested Porsche’s 918, McLaren’s P1, and Ferrari’s LaFerrari—200-plus-mph hybrid-powered rockets all—way back in 2015. The Sián is late to the party, but it unveils a technology claimed as the next big thing for high-performance hybrids: the supercapacitor.

A supercapacitor stores electrical energy, but unlike a battery, it doesn’t bind the energy in a chemical reaction. Instead, the supercapacitor stores electricity in a static state. That means it can recharge almost instantly and can hold more power than a typical lithium-ion battery of the same size. It also has a longer working life than regular batteries and functions at temperature extremes that flummox most battery chemistries.