Battery-powered Bugatti four-door on the way

Fresh details on Bugatti's long-awaited second model to sit below the current Chiron have emerged during an interview with the French car-maker's CEO.

Bugatti's chief executive Stephan Winkelmann told Bloomberg the all-new sibling for its flagship hypercar will be either a grand tourer or an SUV that will seat up to four people, and it will come with a pure-electric powertrain.

Pricing, meanwhile, is set to begin from €500,000 ($A810,000) and stretch to €1 million ($A1.6m) for the most powerful version.

The Bugatti boss said discussions were ongoing with the hypercar's parent company, the Volkswagen Group, over plans to get the project greenlit and Winkelmann admitted that he expected a "hard fight" to secure funding for the four-seater.

Once approved, the new model is expected to draw direct inspiration from the Veyron-powered 2009 Galibier concept that explored a luxurious take on a spacious and practical Bugatti.

"The industry is changing fundamentally, and we have to address what opportunities there are to develop Bugatti as a brand going forward," Winkelmann told Bloomberg.

It's been reported that a pure-electric four-seat Bugatti could provide the niche hypercar-producer with the much-needed volume it requires to be cost-neutral to its parent, safeguarding its future as Volkswagen continues its belt-tightening post the 2015 Dieselgate emissions scandal.

Bugatti's original Veyron was reported to have lost the car-maker $6.25 million ($A9.2m) for every car produced.

Ensuring the future four-door is far more profitable, Bugatti is expected to leverage fellow Volkswagen Group-owned brand Porsche's heavy investment in pure-electric vehicles. This means the future zero-emission SUV or limo could be based on a development of the Taycan's J1 architecture and also share electric motors and batteries to keep costs down.

Croatian pure-electric car specialist, Rimac, could also lend a hand in the four-seat Bugatti creation, following Porsche's investment in it.

Interestingly, the more spacious and practical Bugatti isn't likely to follow in the Chiron's tyre tracks by raising the bar for performance.

Despite the fact the W16 quad-turbo-powered Chiron recently recorded an incredible 300mph top speed record, Winkelmann suggested the brand is done pursuing performance milestones and will instead focus on increasing its cache as a luxury brand.

The cheaper four-door will also see Bugatti's car-making output surge from 500 cars over the lifetime of the Chiron to 600 cars annually.

Bolstering the likelihood that a second model will be approved is the fact that Bugatti is now "earning decent money", said Winkelmann, who added that any new model would justify itself with a solid business case rather than just engineering prowess.