Bugatti CEO Stefan Winkelmann thinks the automaker he runs can't only build ultra-exclusive hypercars forever. In an interview with Bloomberg, Winkelmann said he's pushing for Bugatti's next car to be an electric four-seater of some sort with a much lower price tag.
"The industry is changing fundamentally, and we have to address what
opportunities there are to develop Bugatti as a brand going forward,"
Winkelmann said. Discussions between Bugatti and parent company
Volkswagen over the project are ongoing, with Winkelmann conceding it's a
"hard fight" to get approval to develop such a car.
Bloomberg
reports that the Bugatti EV would be either a grand tourer or a
crossover, though Winkelmann said earlier this year that the brand wouldn't make an SUV.
Currently Bugatti builds around 70 examples of the Chiron per year;
Winkelmann said the aim for this new car—if it's approved—would be 600 a
year. That's a huge expansion for a company that currently employs around two dozen to produce all its cars.
With
higher volume comes a lower price—500,000 to 1 million Euros (about
$550,000 to $1.1 million). That sounds like a lot, but a basic Chiron
costs $3 million and Bugatti's latest special edition, the Centodieci, carries a base price of about $9 million. This EV would be a very different sort of Bugatti.
Bloomberg
notes that Bugatti has been in a precarious spot ever since
Volkswagen's diesel-emissions cheating became public knowledge in 2015.
With the German giant forced to pay huge penalties and make a major
investment into EVs, ultra-high-end brands like Bugatti suddenly seem
like huge excesses.
Bugatti is a holdover of a very different
Volkswagen Group. The automaker's 1998 purchase by VW was masterminded
by the late Ferdinand Piëch, who famously chased engineering excellence
in cars with very little regard to cost. Piëch helped usher the
remarkable Veyron into production, a car that redefined what people
thought was possible. VW reportedly lost around $6 million per car.
Winkelmann
told Bloomberg that Bugatti is "earning decent money" now, but it needs
to present a business case for continued success, regardless of whether
VW decides to spin off the brand. If Bugatti were to build an EV based
on a Volkswagen Group platform, it could likely do so profitably. Even
if the Chiron and its special-edition derivatives are profitable, it was
still a very expensive car to develop, with not much hardware shared
with any other car.
We've reached out to Bugatti for more info on Winkelmann's comments, and we'll update if we hear back.
