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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF
Frank Markus
Technologue
Future Tech: Lamborghini’s
e-Hypercar Inches Toward Viability
emember the Lamborghini Terzo Millennio
concept, launched in November 2017? This wild
design study showed Lamborghini’s impression
of what a fully electric future hypercar might look
Rlike. The design was launched at the same time the
company publicized its research partnerships with the
chemistry and mechanical engineering departments
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now the
chem department program has paid off in a patent.
An electric car simply cannot be a true Lamborghini if
it’s burdened with hundreds of pounds of batteries that
make it weigh more than today’s raging bulls. A great way
to reduce an EV’s weight would be to use supercapacitors
instead of chemical batteries.
Supercaps are spectacularly efficient at storing lots
of energy quickly, but they’re lousy at storing energy for composed of metal-organic framework (MOF) compounds
an extended period of time. No matter how hard your consisting primarily of nickel, copper, and molecular
electric supercar regeneratively brakes going into a turn carbon (not atomic carbon graphene sheets or nanotubes).
or how fast it zooms back out of it, an appropriately sized Past MOFs have been incapable of conducting electricity,
supercapacitor can accept and release this power without but this new one can store it, thanks to the new way these
overheating the way a chemical battery would. Bonus fact: elements and molecules are arranged to roughly double
They can do this racy charge/discharge dance millions the surface area inside the same volume/mass of powder,
of times without degrading. which is how it doubles the energy density. That area now
So Lamborghini and MIT set a research goal of tripling measures “tens of thousands of square meters per gram.”
the energy storage capacity of these supercapacitors Note that the elements in question are all abundant and
within four years. After just two years, the team devised the manufacturing technique should be very similar to
a material that doubles capacity. They’re still working today’s supercapacitors, so cost shouldn’t be terribly high.
toward that additional incremental improvement, but Even at double today’s energy density (which is triple
the research to date was deemed significant the density of the best supercapacitors 10 Supercapacitors
look nothing
enough to warrant a patent application in years ago), electric vehicles may never run
like “flux
the names of the Lamborghini and MIT on supercapacitors alone. They’ll still require capacitors,”
engineers responsible. The patent covers some chemical battery storage. Lamborghini’s and making
any electrical
the chemical and geometric properties of collaboration with MIT’s mechanical engi-
hardware look
the powdered material inside the supercapacitors. neering department is researching the possibility of inte- sexy represents
This announcement marks a significant milestone in grating solid-state battery storage into the vehicle’s central an MIT-grade
challenge.
the research phase of the technology, but its development carbon-fiber structure in the least crash-vulnerable areas.
phase has yet to start. This will include determining the This “built in, not bolted on” approach promises increased
glue or paste that will affix the powder to its metallic safety, smaller packaging, and lighter weight. The team has
electrode strip, a manufacturing technique to roll or yet to reach a patentable milestone and is not divulging much
fold it into a cylindrical or pouch form factor, and then information about its progress, but we do know it involves
mechanical and life-cycle testing. elemental carbon nanotubes that are “grown” perpendicular
Today’s supercapacitors typically use porous activated to and connecting with two layers of structural carbon fiber
carbon, which includes zillions of nano-sized pockets for separated by some small number of microns.
the electric ions to affix themselves to. The new powder is Alternating nanotubes serve as anodes and cathodes,
closely separated by a solid-state electrolyte, about which no
info has been divulged. (MIT has several programs ongoing
in this space, and with power-optimized supercapacitors on
board, said electrolyte can be optimized for energy storage.)
Lamborghini CEO Stefano Domenicali has teased
a future research project “in the dimension of sound,” a
cryptic hint that has us intrigued. Q
FEBRUARY 2020 MOTORTREND.COM 25
