Lamborghini Unveils Electric Supercar

(Image courtesy of Automobili Lamborghini.)

Automobili Lamborghini, in collaboration with two laboratories at MIT, has unveiled an electric super sports car concept, the Lamborghini Terzo Millennio.

The company will be working with the Dinca Research Lab, led by Prof. Mircea Dinca in the department of chemistry and the Mechanosynthesis Group, led by Prof. Anastasios John Hart in the department of mechanical engineering. The collaboration is substantially financed by Automobili Lamborghini, with the aim of fostering innovation in energy storage systems technology and material science.

A Fully Electric Lamborghini

The company is aiming to move away from conventional batteries and so is investigating the potential of equipping the Terzo Millennio with supercapacitors. This is in line with the application of low voltage supercapacitors in the V12 Aventador, which was released five years ago.

Prof. Mircea Dinca is aiming to overcome the limits of today’s technology and close the gap on conventional batteries’ energy density while preserving the high power, symmetrical behavior and the very long lifecycle related to supercapacitor technology.

(Image courtesy of Automobili Lamborghini.)

"The new Lamborghini collaboration allows us to be ambitious and think outside the box in designing new materials that answer energy storage challenges for the demands of an electric sport vehicle,” said Dinca. “We look forward to teaming up with their engineers and work on this exciting project".

Each of the Terzo Millennio’s wheels will incorporate an integrated electric engine, which the company says will give it four-wheel torque control and high reversibility. Lamborghini also noted the added benefit of additional freedom for designers and aerodynamicists.

Self-Healing Carbon Fiber

The Lamborghini-MIT collaboration will also focus on the design and production of carbon fiber structures and parts. MIT’s Hart will investigate the new manufacturing routes for carbon fiber materials constituting the bodyshell of the Terzo Millennio, which will also act as an accumulator for energy storage and enable the entire body of the car to be used as a storage system.

The project also aims to combine the technology to continuously monitor the whole carbon fiber structure, both visible and invisible. The goal is to provide the Terzo Millennio with the ability to conduct its own health monitoring to detect cracks and damage in its substructure derived from accidents. In such an event, the company envisions a self-repairing process that starts via micro-channels filled with liquids that reduce the risk of small cracks propagating further in the carbon fiber structure. This would allow further weight reduction with increased use of carbon fiber or the application of CFK to high-fatigue parts.

(Image courtesy of Automobili Lamborghini.)

As a final futuristic touch, the Terzo Millenio’s virtual cockpit will offer a Piloted Driving simulation, which allows the driver to be taken around a tracks like Imola by a virtual expert before the driver takes over, experiencing the real car and circuit while following the virtual ghost car.

For more high-performance EV news, check out Renault’s vision of the future of Formula 1.