Lamborghini and MIT team-up on self-healing electric supercar
Luxury automaker and US research university say car’s body, made from supercapacitors, will act as its battery and also monitor and repair itself
The next generation of Lamborghinis could act as their own superpowered batteries and be able to repair themselves.
Automobili Lamborghini unveiled its Terzo Millennio (“third millennium”) concept car at the EmTech conference in the American city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, on Monday.
The car is the product of the first 12 months of a three-year partnership between the carmaker and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
True to Lamborghini tradition, the car has a lean, windswept design and the brand’s trademark Y tail lights. The windshield seems to extend from the top of the car almost to the driver’s toes, and the body crouches so low it almost looks like an outgrowth of the road.
Yet the most remarkable aspects of the car are invisible – not least because they don’t exist yet.
If Lamborghini – and we – deliver on this promise, it will be really cool for the future of all transportation
The lithium-ion batteries in today’s electric cars release energy more slowly and run down over repeated charges because they depend on chemical reactions.
Supercapacitors store energy physically and don’t generate the heat of lithium-ions, but up to now they don’t offer as much power.