Bugatti’s next hypercar will have a ‘strongly electrified’ combustion engine

If you’re not the sort to pay attention to every online video... we can relate. You’re busy. The wifi is spotty. The video thumbnail had YouTube shrug face on it. Any of these reasons will do.

But if you didn’t watch Nico Rosberg’s in-person pickup of the first Rimac Nevera, you won’t have caught the little backdoor pilot for the upcoming Bugatti Chiron replacement.

Maté Rimac – of Rimac, Bugatti and ‘being a good human’ fame – told the F1 alumnus: “For the past two and a half years, we have been working on a successor.” First off, it’s lovely that Maté is already using ‘we’ when talking about Bugatti. But also that whole ‘Chiron successor already being a full 30 months into its development’ thing. What could it possibly do to outdo the Chiron?

Mr Rimac concedes that point to Mr Rosberg, too, telling him the Chiron’s engine is “an amazing engine and the pinnacle of automotive engine development, but now the time has come to go the next step".

So, does that mean we’re looking at Bugattis underpinned by Rimac electric powertrains? Er, not as such. At least not yet.

“The next step is not going to be electric... not all-electric,” says Rimac. Instead, the Chiron’s successor will have a “very interesting combustion engine, and strongly electrified.”

There it is, folks – a hybrid Bugatti. But like the LaFerrari, Porsche 918 Spyder and McLaren P1 so ably demonstrated, there are hybrids, and then there are hybrids. But what does it mean about Bugatti’s penchant for big displacement and even bigger cylinder counts?

“I would say it’s going in the opposite direction of what everybody expects,” says Rimac.

Which is an interesting one. Is Maté referring to the general expectation that new cars have smaller capacity and smaller cylinder counts? Or is ‘going in the opposite direction’ referring to Bugatti’s tendency to have many more cylinders, turbos and indeed radiators than logic would suggest even remotely necessary?

We’ll just have to wait and see, unfortunately. But, if nothing else, at least this news has our attention...

Image: Nico Rosberg’s Rimac Nevera video, via YouTube