2025 Lamborghini Urus SE first drive review: Bull by the horns

Not a fan of electrics? Still want to be seen as the saviour of polar bears and Himalayan glaciers? Hybrids now let you have your cake and eat it too. The hell and brimstone of combustion engines along with the deathly silent creep of an EV. No more waking up your neighbours at 5 in the morning on a Sunday; no more will the strays go nuts chasing you down the street. Whether you like it or not, the new Urus SE will always start in pure EV mode. And unless provoked, the super SUV will run for 60km in EV mode up to a top speed of 130kmph, provided of course you’ve juiced up the batteries. The plug-in hybrid is the biggest update to the Urus SE, adding a massive dollop of power along with nods of approval from the cynical where-are-the-roads-to-drive-fast-cars uncles. Except this is Lamborghini. Everything has to be over the top. And with the Urus SE, the headline heroics are the newfound drifting chops.

Nardo: The mecca of automotive testing

Except we won’t be driving on the 12.5km high-speed track, site of all the epic records I grew up reading about. In 1979, a Mercedes C111 reached a world record top-speed of 403.978kmph. In 1982 the first 24-hour speed records were set, a Porsche 928S averaging 251.4kmph while covering 6033km. In 2002 Volkswagen’s Concept W12 Nardo annihilated that record by covering 7749km in 24 hours, averaging 322.9kmph. It’s a record that, I believe, still stands today and those records inspired us to do similar endurance runs in India.

Nardo also has crazy stories. In a supposedly secret test in the early 2000s, Bugatti test driver Loris Biocchi blew a front tyre which blew the brakes while also sending the fender smashing into the windscreen, all at 398kmph in a Veyron prototype. Loris’s instinct steered him into the guardrail and after damaging 1.8km of guardrail, the Bugatti stopped. Nardo presented him a bill.

That prompted Porsche Engineering, who bought Nardo in 2012, to invest 35 million euros to upgrade the track while also developing and installing a new guardrail for the track. Today their 90-plus client roster includes, including all the VW Group brands, BMW, Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, Maserati, even Ferrari, but high level of confidentiality means nobody will say anything about anything. And that’s the same reason we cannot point our cameras at the high-speed track, let alone drive on it. It’s like visiting a chocolate factory and then being told no eating chocolate.

That Nardo have allowed us journalists within their hallowed grounds is a miracle in itself – this is the first ever press event at Nardo; before leaving India I had to sit through a 1 hour safety briefing; before the drive we were given a test (yes, a test!) to make sure we actually paid attention at the safety briefing; and through the day I would go through the rigmarole of sealing and unsealing my phone from secure covers at least a dozen times, all while being sternly instructed where not to point our cameras – especially not at the high-speed track where camouflaged prototypes were barrelling down at what looked like 300kmph, but a sight so awesome we cried like kids denied chocolates in a chocolate factory.

Our attention had to be diverted, and nothing in the automotive universe turns grown men into eight-year-olds other than a Lamborghini. Especially one that is destroying its tyres while slaloming sideways on a skid pad lurking in the shadow of the highspeed bowl. With the new electric assistance there’s a tsunami of torque, deployed in instantaneous fashion, making it surprisingly easy to break traction at the rear axle. In fact such is the torque on tap that you can not only smoke the rear tyres in power oversteer but there’s also torque left over to fry the unloaded inside wheel – three tyres on the bonfire, one doing all the work. Unless your job involves expensing out tyres it's hard to imagine anybody destroying their Urus SE’s tyres in the fashion you see on these pages, but it does make for incredible pictures, and when you’re asked whether you’d like another drift session to create more pictures, your correspondent is the last person to say no.

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE: Dimensions and design

On that subject we are sent back to the classroom, more fussing over the sealing of phones for the short drive over, and our audience with Lamborghini’s head of design Mitja Borkert who tells me that, “Urus’s success is certainly influenced by its design.” He points to the new front hood that has no visible shut line, gets added power domes, and everything is more three-dimensional. The new DRLs are inspired by bullhorns with Lamborghini characterising each model line with unique DRL shapes – Y-shape for the Revuelto, hexagon for the Temerario, and bullhorns for the Urus. Aligning with the nose, the rear also gets the shark nose treatment while the number plate has been moved to lower down the bumper. The redesigned bumpers, grille and bonnet along with a new rear spoiler and diffuser contributes to a 35 per cent increase in downforce over the Urus S while the underbody changes divert more cooling air to the engine and brakes.

Drift Training 101: Pursuit of precision

But first a quick detour to the classroom, much fussing over the sealing of phones and cameras for the short drive over, and a sit down with Lamborghini’s chief technical officer to understand how the system works. The old torsen centre differential is replaced by what Reuven Mohr calls a ‘hang-on’ four-wheel-drive system that uses a Haldex clutch that engages or disengages the front axle based on the pressure applied. The more the clutch is closed, the more torque is transferred to the front, and vice versa. Additionally, the electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential locks the left and right rear wheels via a clutch system, the degree of rear axle lock depending on the situation. But the most important bit, says Reuven, is Lamborghini’s proprietary algorithm governing the system that tailors the Urus’ behavior based on the driving style and selected mode. In Sport the SE becomes more rear-wheel driven while in Corsa it offers a neutral balance enabling precise control to shave tenths off a lap time. Electronic anti-roll bars are tasked with managing and masking the super-SUV’s weight, rather than a fully active suspension system as on the Ferrari Purosangue.

Unlike other systems that are reactive, this is a feed-forward system that anticipates what the driver might want. If it detects a sharp input on the steering or throttle it knows the driver wants to drift and orchestrates the front-rear torque distribution and limited-slip management on the rear to effect precisely that but in a manner that Reuven clarifies is, “Intuitively responsive. The goal is for the driver to feel completely in sync with the car without consciously noticing the system’s adjustments.”

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE: Power and performance

All of which would have amounted to not very much without the power to overwhelm the grip of enormous 23-inch rubber. This plug-in super-SUV now has more power than the Aventador SVJ had. The 4-litre twin-turbocharged V8 generates 612bhp on its own. That works with a 189bhp electric motor integrated into the Urus’s eight-speed automatic gearbox drawing electric juice from a 25.9kWh battery mounted above the rear axle. The hybrid system reduces CO2 by a whopping 80 per cent on the WLTP test cycle – but of more interest to us enthusiasts is the massive gains in performance. 132bhp and 100Nm more than the hardcore Urus Performante. The combined 789bhp and 950Nm delivers a 0-100kmph sprint in 3.4sec (a tenth quicker), and a top speed of 310kmph. It even does the same lap times as the Performante when fitted with the same tyres, and that’s despite the hybrid system taking the SE's kerb weight up to 2504kg, compared to 2197kg for the standard Urus S.

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE: Ride and dynamics

There’s now, of course, more than enough power to overcome all the additional weight – Reuven points out the e-LSD’s job is not so much torque vectoring as it is managing the amount of wheelspin, because there’s always an over-abundance of torque to spin up the wheels. And the incredible engine response is another factor turning the SE into a drift demon that impresses even more on a rally stage. Not a wag of the tail before ESP cuts in to save you from your talent deficit, but extravagant, tyre-murdering, full-opposite-lock drifts on bone-dry, super-hot tarmac no less. The Urus SE is a drift monster and to test it out the international media has congregated at the mecca of automotive testing, Nardo in southern Italy, whose perfectly circular high-speed track, 4km in diameter is one of only three man made things visible from space, the other two being the pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China.

With the 700-acre Nardo proving ground are dozens of other tracks – 6.2km handling track with 16 curves; dynamic platforms the largest of which has two 700m straights with a 100m skid pad radius; water wading tracks; 2.1km dust and gravel bowl; 3.5km cross country road; 10.5km rough road called Africa road; and two off road tracks, 2.1km long, one O-shaped and other S-shaped. We are on the latter which is like a proper rally stage complete with bumps, dips and ruts, trees lining the track, and heavily dug up corners from the three weeks the Urus has been tested by waves and waves of journalists. Use all of the considerable mass to set it up for each corner, hang the tail out, enter and exit sideways, and the Urus SE turns into a rally hero! As impressive as big smoke drifts on tarmac look, the ability of the Urus SE to do a genuine rally car impression on gravel, be agile and playful, all while soaking up the ruts and dips, is even more astonishing. And an Urus, covered from head to toe in mud after a rally session looks just so cool.

While no Bentley, this super-SUV delivers a perfectly acceptable, in fact comfortable, ride while not losing out on the essential character of a Lamborghini; the sense of drama; the ever present sense of occasion. Even the gearshifts have a torque-bump mapped-in to give you that kick when you shift at the redline. And that’s all deliberately engineered in because with the hybrid, and this is something that Bentley who share the same powertrain are doing, the e-motor can completely smooth out the gearshift. But then a Lamborghini wouldn’t be a Lamborghini without all this drama. And the Urus wouldn’t be the runaway success that it is without the underlying comfort and usability.

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE: Cabin and comfort

Inside, the big update is the infotainment display which goes from 10.1 inches to 12.3 inches and it gets a new hexagon-heavy graphics skin to hide the Audi MMI that lurks underneath. You also get a baffling array of driving modes. On the right of the Tamburo (drum in Italian) drive mode selector is a new lever to cycle between the four hybrid strategies – EV Drive (pure electric), Hybrid (where the Urus decides what’s best for the situation), Performance (max power at all times) and Recharge (to, obviously, recharge the batteries for when you want EV mode to creep into your building).

To the left are the existing six Ego modes that carry over from the pure-petrol Urus: Neve (ice), Terra (for drifting on gravel), Sabbia (sand), Strada (road), Sport (best for drifting on tarmac) and Corsa (for lap times). These drive modes adapt the air suspension, steering, powertrain response, and engine noise delivering better comfort than the Urus S in Strada and a more aggressive character in Sport and Corsa. This is evident on our road drive on bumpy village roads around the Puglia region in the so-called hell of Italy where the SE delivers far better comfort than the Urus Performante that I drove just a week prior on the 2024 Giro from Delhi to Rishikesh and Mussoorie.

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE: Verdict and pricing

This is Lamborghini’s best-selling car, by far. In India they have a run rate of delivering one Urus every week, ever since it was launched in January of 2018 at ₹3 crore. The Urus is the reason Lamborghini India is in ridiculously good health, being one of the few markets globally where they outsell Ferrari. Last year 103 Lamborghinis were sold in India, 60 per cent of which were the Urus. And despite the price hike on the Urus SE, up by 9 per cent from ₹4.18 crore of the Performante to ₹4.57 crore for the SE, demand isn’t slowing down with average wait times stretching to 15 months. And this I must warn you is the ex-showroom ‘starting price’ with 21-inch wheels – most customers will opt for 22s if not the 23s on the car we tested. In fact, on average, customers add 20 per cent over and above the sticker price in options and another 20 per cent, for whom 150 colours are enough of a choice, sign up for the Ad Personam personalisation program. The Urus SE might not wake up the neighbours on a Sunday morning, but on the road you will not mistake it for anything else in this world.