We examine the guile, wisdom, and tech that goes into making an 1,800-horsepower plug-in hybrid
Wondering where, when taking that long look, to look first? Do you try to peek at the all-new V16 motor? The humongous scoops that will try — and, with a 400-plus-km/h top speed, you hope they succeed — to cool brakes and engine alike? How about that seemingly miles-deep two-xftone paint? Or, if you’re a die-hard technocrat, maybe it’s the complex aerodynamics absolutely necessary when you’re trying to stay on the road at the above-mentioned 400-plus km/h that catches your eye?
I obviously have no idea where you’ll look first. But I absolutely do know where Bugatti wants to focus you attention: the instrument cluster.
The tachometer and speedo spin on the same axis, and are powered by a set of tiny, precise gears that would do a Patek Phillipe proud, and because it’s built of titanium — with a few sapphires and rubies tossed in for good measure — the whole kit and caboodle weighs but 700 grams (1.5 lbs). Watch the video above to see what happens when Swiss craftsmanship meets French-German-Croatian automotive engineering.
But this website is called Driving.ca, and more important — much more — than how the new Bugatti communicates its speed is what makes all this high-velocity horologie possible.
A most amazing internal-combustion engine
There are a lot of amazing things about the new Tourbillon — 1,800 horsepower, 24,000-rpm electric motors, etc. — but here’s what blew me away. Both the new Tourbillon and the original Veyron have 16 pistons; both displace roughly the same cylinder capacity, at 8.3 litres for the new V16, and a flat 8.0L for the original W16. And, surprisingly enough, both the original 2004 version and this latest 2024 model produce almost exactly the same horsepower — 1,000 horsepower for the new Tourbillon, 1,001 hp for the first Veyron.
So, what’s the amazing part, I hear you asking?
Well, while the then-stupefying Veyron needed four turbochargers — count ’em, four, one for each bank of four cylinders — to pull off that output figure, the new Tourbillon has nada a turbo in sight. That’s right. This latest miracle from Molsheim is naturally aspirated.
That’s made all the more amazing by the fact the quad-turbo’d W16 was running a spectacular-for-the-time — and not-so-unspectacular-now — 18 psi of boost, which, according to HowStuffWorks, doubled the Veyron’s output. That’s right. Without the kind of force-feeding that would grenade many a lesser engine, the mighty W16 would have had half the horses Bugatti says the Tourbillon now boasts.
In the absence of those impellers and compressors, the new V16 spins. It spins very hard, in fact. Watch, again, the above video and you can see it shifting at 9,000 rpm (listen to the video and you’ll also get to hear what 16 surprisingly-lightly-muffled pistons sound like at those 9,000 revs).
Perhaps a little more perspective on those numbers: Honda’s much-celebrated S2000 made 247 hp from just 1,997 cc and revved to 8,900 rpm. The world — this was 1999, after all — was agog. Two horsepower for every cubic inch of displacement without the aid of turbocharging? 8,900 rpm!? Incredible! Fast-forward to the Tourbillon and it doesn’t take a calculator to figure out the new Bugatti’s engine is the equivalent of four Honda F20Cs belting out the same two horses per cube at 9,000-rpm song, only now with 16 pistons and 504 cubic inches.
One last thing: the decision to make the Tourbillon ICE and naturally-aspirated almost forced the need for electrification. For one, an engine spinning that hard is going to lack low-end torque, a benefit we now take for granted with electric motors. While mating big electricity with big turbos — both excel at the same thing (low-end grunt) and fall flat in the same criteria (high-rpm power) — would seem less than optimal, pairing up two powertrains that complement each other’s weakness — in this case, the electric motor’s “torque-filling” offering the Tourbillon some grunt off the line, with the screeching V16 providing high-speed horsepower — makes much more sense.
Oh, and, one last reason it made so much sense to electrify this high-revving V16. The reason big-inch naturally-aspirated multi-cylinder engines are going the way of the dodo bird — the new Bugatti seemingly a glaring exception — is that they have a lot of internal friction. More cubic inches mean the pistons must be bigger, which means their circumference is likewise huge. That means more contact between piston skirts and cylinder wall as they rush up and down.
Much better for emissions reduction is fewer — or smaller — pistons with less contact area, and then making up the power deficit, when needed, with huffing turbochargers. Without electrification, I suspect the Tourbillon would have been an epic gas-guzzler, even by supercar standards.
Some pretty amazing electrification, too!
Adding to the V16’s 1,000 horsepower are some 800 additional electrified horses. There’s not a lot of information available, but we do know there’s one motor behind each of the Tourbillon’s front wheels, plus an additional one torquing the rear axle. They spin, as I said, at a heady-even-for-an-electric-motor 24,000 rpm, and all told put out the aforementioned 800 hp.
Perhaps the more impressive part of this is that the “e-axles,” as Bugatti calls them, weigh but 0.16 kilograms (0.35 lbs) per kilowatt. That means, if you’re willing to grab a calculator and do a couple of quick conversions, that all the inverters, motors, and gearboxes that go into those 800 electrified ponies weigh just 94 kilograms (207 lbs). Compare that with the 252 kilos (or 555 lbs, which is actually pretty light for a V16) the ICE weighs, and you get some of the attraction of electrification.
An oil-based battery cooling system
Pretty much everyone understands that, like ICE powertrains, the batteries, inverters, and motors that propel EVs — or even the 800-hp electric motors of a super-PHEV — need to be kept cool. In the case of a battery, that means between roughly 15 C and 30 C (59 F and 86 F). Go above — or below — that fairly narrow window, and range, charging speed, and even acceleration suffer.
Most EV batteries are kept cool via a cold-plate system. Essentially, the cold “plates” are in contact with the battery cells, and they themselves are cooled by glycol flowing over them. In other words, the batteries are not being cooled directly, which limits how much heat can be transferred in high-stress situations (such as the hard acceleration that a car like the Tourbillon is likely to be subjected to).
Now, to be explicit, I have no direct input from Bugatti as to the exact machinations of its oil-cooling system for the Tourbillon’s 25-kilowatt-hour battery. On the other hand, there is lots of ongoing research into using oil, rather than glycol, as the medium to maintain optimum battery temperature, and it seems the main attraction is that, rather than cooling a plate which then cools the battery, the oil comes in direct contact with the cells themselves.
That may be important. I distinctly recall Mate Rimac claiming one of the advancements that made his fully battery-powered Nevera so all-conquering was its ability to maintain a consistent temperature across its cells. He wouldn’t tell me the hows and whys of the technology involved — and perhaps I wouldn’t have understood him anyway — but that claim became all the more illuminating in another little factoid I found in Cargill’s research.
Imagine the new Tourbillon weighs 1,800 kilograms—working on its electric powertrain alone, it would have a power to weight ratio of one horsepower for every five pounds, about the same as Ferrari’s incredible 458 Speciale, before the Bugatti’s big V16 even fires up
It’ll not be any great surprise to find out pumping more coolant — be it plain ol’ glycol or an ester-based dielectric oil like Cargill’s — reduces operating temperature. In both cases, the faster the coolant is flowing over the battery, the more heat was removed. “More coolant, more cooling” is a pretty easy concept to grasp.
2026 Bugatti Tourbillon performance numbers
Bugatti swears up and down that, despite the addition of a battery, three electric motors, and a host of inverters, the Tourbillon will weigh less than a Chiron. Maybe it’s those lightweight electric motors. Or, as I said, the fact the 16-cylinder engine is so relatively light. Hell, maybe the all-new carbon-composite-and-aluminum chassis is feather-like. The source of the Tourbillon’s litheness is not nearly as important as the fact that, despite its dual powertrains, it will weigh less than 1,996 kilograms (4,400 lbs) the Chiron tipped the scales at.
So, let’s say we credit Mr. Rimac with not only the ability to lightweight, but also with an outsized sense of symmetry — I sense the new CEO of Bugatti has a great appreciation for “engineering as art” — and imagine the new Tourbillon weighs 1,800 kilograms (3,970 lbs). That would mean the Tourbillon working on its secondary powertrain alone — those three electric motors — would have a power to weight ratio of one horsepower for every five pounds.
That’s about the same as Ferrari’s incredible 458 Speciale, before the Bugatti’s big V16 even fires up. Yup, operating on its secondary powertrain, the Tourbillon is probably just as fast as my favourite Ferrari.
So now consider this. Total up both the Tourbillon’s electric and piston-powered powertrains and its power-to-weight ratio, and — if I am right in my 1,800-kg-curb-weight estimation — the Bugatti would offer one horsepower for every 2.2 pounds, equivalent to one horsepower for every kilogram. By any standard, that’s outrageous.
Still, I have no idea how fast this thing will be. Certainly Bugatti, its marketing mavens master of the big — that should be read, “extended” — tease, aren’t saying.
But watch that video again. To the end this time. All the way to the end. See where the speedometer needle winds up on that animation? Unless I am greatly mistaken, Bugatti seems to be implying the Tourbillon’s top speed is somewhere around 445 kilometres an hour. That’s about 275 miles per hour. Maybe I was wrong: the most amazing thing about the Tourbillon may not be that the naturally-aspirated engine makes so much power, but about how it makes use of it.
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