Pagani Isn’t Making Hybrids, Because Nobody Wants Them

Horacio Pagani explains that he doesn’t feel like the market’s there for electrified supercars in the arena Pagani competes in

Mike Bartholomew

03 Sep 2024

Supercars are getting increasingly electrified. Lamborghini, Ferrari and McLaren all have at least one hybrid in their current ranges, and even the Porsche 911 has some electrical assistance now. Higher up, in the echelons of the hypercar, there are full EVs coming from the likes of Lotus, Pininfarina and Rimac. One company that’s so far stuck firmly to nothing but petrol power, though, is Pagani.

Now, company founder and CEO Horacio Pagani has explained why in an interview with The Drive: people – or at least people who buy Paganis – aren’t interested in hybrids. “Our clients think along those lines. I believe that if you ask people, most of them will say that a hybrid is something extraordinary because it has all the problems of an electric car and all the problems of a combustion car—along with higher costs.”

He also revealed that Pagani’s latest model, the V12-powered Utopia, was originally planned to be a V8 hybrid – likely using Mercedes-AMG’s 4.0-litre twin-turbo unit – but “that the car was just too heavy, 400 or 500 kilos more, and our clients didn’t want anything to do with it.”

It’s also the reason that a fully electric Pagani is yet to make an appearance, despite the company pulling together a team back in 2017 to start work on one. Supposedly, both long-time Pagani engine partner AMG and American EV startup Lucid were involved in the project, but it too has been put on the back burner as Pagani found that the demand for a fully electric hypercar simply isn’t there.

He’s not the only one to experience this. Even Mate Rimac, founder of Rimac Automobili, a company built entirely around the concept of ultra-high-performance EVs, has said that future cars from the company could include combustion engines as it struggles to sell the planned run of 150 Neveras.

As for the 6.0-litre V12 that powers the Utopia, Pagani says it’s fully homologated and compliant with emissions rules until 2031. What happens after that isn’t clear, but Pagani says the company is doing all it can to keep the engine around.

The first full sentence spoken by an infant Mike was a review of the ride quality of a Volvo 850. It was “Daddy’s car goes bumpy-bump on a bumpy road,” so would probably need proofreading a bit, but it was a start.