Bugatti's next hypercar will be electrified

Electrification is inevitable, but the Chiron\'s successor won\'t land with a full electric drivetrain.

The Bugatti Chiron escaped electrification, but that won't be the case for its successor. Company boss Wolfgang Dürheimer said incorporating some form of electrification will be necessary when it comes time to develop a new model.

"Electrification will happen. The next car is a long way from being developed, but the way battery and electric motor technology is moving on - as well as the regulations - it seems certain that the next car will be electrified in some way,” he said in an interview with British magazine Autocar.

Electrification doesn't mean electric. The Chiron's replacement won't arrive until well into the 2020s at the earliest, yet it won't launch with a battery-electric drivetrain. The technology required to make an electric car perform better than the Chiron won't be ready yet, and it's not necessarily what buyers are looking for.

Instead, the next Bugatti hypercar will like arrive with a powerful gasoline-electric plug-in hybrid drivetrain. The electric part will allow the model to drive on electricity alone when needed, and it will provide a significant e-boost effect the rest of the time.

Dürheimer believes the Chiron is the last - and the best - of a breed. "There will probably never be a car with the pure mechanical capabilities of the Chiron. The fact that it may never be beaten in pure mechanical terms makes it incredibly desirable,” he opined, adding that he's considering buying one for himself.