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Lamborghini Reveals Their Future-Proof ‘Terzo Millennio’

The name ‘Terzo Millennio’ means third millennium. Either Lamborghini are foreseeing a really long wait for this car, or the car’s main aim is to be future proof. After reading the press release, I’m expecting the latter. Although it’s going to be a few years off to say the least.

The idea behind this project is to produce an EV Lamborghini while still retaining the intimidation, drama, and kerb appeal of a naturally aspirated Italian supercar. So to fit this, Lamborghini gave themselves two major rules: It must be able to exceed 186mph, and has to be able  to complete 3 laps of the Nurburgring without needing a charge. Why? Lamborghini’s chief technical officer Maurizio Reggiani says that that’s when you’ll need to replace the tyres.

Lamborghini have realised that they need to break into the EV market, but they don’t want to just produce an EV, they want to dominate it and evolve from the current technology. To do this, they’re looking at integrating countless tiny copper anodes and cathodes into the carbon weave, therefore turning the whole chassis into a system of energy storage. And while that does sound very expensive to repair, the team are using aerospace polymer technology to allow the car to heal itself.

MIT, who are working with Lamborghini on the project, have already proven that this tech can work on a small scale, and are currently working on scaling it up to work on a larger scale. They’re also looking into supercapacitors which are able to hold more energy and enable the car to reach its Nurburgring rules. MIT have already discovered a new element which can 4.5V – three times the energy of current cars on the market.

Lamborghini are aiming to give the driver full control, so while autonomy is on the horizon, they’re going about it a different way. Reggiani tells Top Gear:

“You buy a Lamborghini for yourself,” Reggiani said. “I cannot imagine somebody that buys a Lamborghini leaving a computer to drive the car. What we want to do in a car like this is to create a kind of human or virtual interface that is able to talk with you, to give you feedback about what you can achieve with the car, how far you are from best performance, and what you need to do in order to improve – a kind of autonomous supporter. This is our idea of autonomous driving.”

But are we going to miss the roar or a Lambo V12? Well, yes. There’s no way you can get around that. But Lamborghini are working on a way to produce sounds from the aero. In essence, turning the car into a wind instrument.

We can’t wait to see what happens in the coming years regarding this car, and hope Lamborghini and MIT can pull it off. These next few years are going to go by very slowly, I think.

Alex Harrington

Alex started racing at a young age so certainly knows his way around a car and a track. He can just about put a sentence together too, which helps. He has a great interest in the latest models, but would throw all of his money at a rusty old French classic and a 300ZX. Contact: [email protected]

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