Lamborghini Terzo Millennio – future-forward supercar

Remember the Lamborghini concept teased over the weekend? Well, here it is in all its glory, and it looks as though it has leapt straight out of Blade Runner. The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio, as the name suggests, is a brazen look into the third millennium, featuring some startling new ideas on the future of the supercar.

Those ideas are being developed in collaboration with two laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the Dinca Research Lab at the Department of Chemistry, and the Mechanosynthesis Group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The collaboration is being “substantially financed” by Lamborghini, and is intended to advance the fields of energy storage and material science.

Energy storage? Yes, you read that right. Sant’Agata may be the last holdout against the trend of electrification, but even it admits its cars can’t run on massive V12 engines forever. To that end, Lamborghini envisions the use of in-wheel electric motors to provide the high level of all-wheel drive performance that buyers have come to expect from the Raging Bull.

The use of these motors provide manifold benefits such as high torque available from a standstill, as well as the ability to slow down or even reverse the direction of each wheel, paving the way for torque vectoring. The company is now finding a way to extract Lamborghini amounts of power from the motors, as well as a way to deal with the extra unsprung weight.

Conventional batteries won’t cut it for Lamborghini, which requires a storage device capable of delivering high peak power, regenerate kinetic energy without being significantly affected by aging and cycling, and release and harvest electric energy symmetrically and simultaneously.

As such, the joint venture is looking into supercapacitors, a natural move for the supercar maker after introducing a low-voltage version on the Aventador in 2012 to provide engine stop/start capability. The challenge now is to match batteries in terms of energy density while preserving its advantages.

The aforementioned in-wheel motors have enabled the outlandish exterior to be design with aerodynamic efficiency in mind, with huge holes cut into the bodywork to allow air to flow through as cleanly as possible, like on a Ford GT or Aston Martin Valkyrie.

The glass cockpit has been pushed far forwards, but the long, low stance and Y-shaped head- and tail lights ensure that the Terzo Millennio is still recognisably Lamborghini. The monocoque, made from the company’s Forged Composite (chopped carbon fibres in resin, achieving complex lightweight shapes not possible with typical CFRP) technology, only contains the seats and the energy accumulation system, race car-style.

Speaking of which, the collaboration will investigate new manufacturing methods for constructing the carbon bodyshell – which is also being developed to store energy, serving as a battery. Also on the cards is technology designed to monitor the carbon fibre structure, as well as a self-repairing system comprised of micro-channels with healing chemistries to stop cracks from propagating further.

Lastly, the Terzo Millennio features a virtual cockpit with a Piloted Driving simulation system, which allows the driver to be guided around a track like Imola virtually, before taking to the track themselves. Sounds like a bunch of cool new technologies, eh? Let us know what you think in the comments section after the jump.

Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.