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Lamborghini Unveils a Self-Healing Electric Supercar Concept
- proaralyst 9y agoThis is a concept and the article mentions that many of the technologies do not yet exist.
- mtgx 9y agoTesla's competitors are so great at making electric cars...in theory.
- reitzensteinm 9y agoSo is Tesla :-)
- lafar6502 9y agoHe asked for this, ha ha
- mtgx 9y agoAt least Tesla has had Model S, 5-8 years before everyone else. Also, Model 3 is already shipping. So it actually exists. Unlike this car. It's just that Tesla can't produce as many as it wanted due to certain battery production bottlenecks (so not even an issue with the rest of the car).
- s17n 9y agoJust accept the zinger with grace.
- dovdovdov 9y agoThey are losing less money though...in practice. ;)
- sctb 9y agoThanks, we've added “Concept” to the title to clarify.
- usrusr 9y agoThere are many different shades of "concept"... This particular case seems to be very close to showing off an amazing idea of how sleekly warp nacelles could be integrated with gull wing doors. The Ford Nucleon was closer to implementation than this.
- Munksgaard 9y agoWhat's with all the auto-playing videos these days? I don't even know how to turn this video off....
- iagooar 9y agoThere should be an add-on that just basically stops one from even opening a website with this kind of practice. I left as soon as the video started playing.
- Yaggo 9y agoJust FYI for Mac users, latest Safari has this feature built-in.
- CoffeeDregs 9y agoI installed an add-on in Firefox called "Disable HTML5 Autoplay". Works great.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agocmd+w works. I did gather that Google / Chrome wanted to auto mute autoplaying videos.
- MiddleEndian 9y agoI use adblock with element hiding helper in Firefox to block videos by clicking on them, especially with the new awful trend of position fixed videos that follow you when you scroll down to avoid them.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- LeonM 9y ago> the company will develop in-wheel electric motors, which would eliminate the need for a single large engine. A 'single large engine' is only needed in ICE cars, electric vehicles have a 'small' motor, and can easily have multiple motors. It's already being done by Tesla and Rimac. To my knowledge, an 'in wheel' motor would not be desirable due to unsprung mass, so a motor on the chassis connected to the wheel with an axle probably what they mean. Having 4 individual motors would be a first (I think) for a production car, it would allow for some very impressive traction control
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoThat design doesn't look like it has any springs anyway, so the whole thing is a giant unsprung mass, :p
- agumonkey 9y agoEvery time the idea comes up, "unsprung mass" is thrown like a pavlovian reflex. I'm curious about what they have in mind for solving the constraints. They aren't the less experienced people around.
- roman_savchuk 9y agoLarge outrunner motors like Emrax aren't much heavier than typical cast alloy wheels. Assuming wheel-motor eliminates disc brake components (sounds scary, right?) assembly will probably be even lighter. http://emrax.com/products/emrax-268/ http://emrax.com/products/emrax-268/
- agumonkey 9y agoThanks a ton for that
- johnbrodie 9y agoAt least on a performance vehicle, that's still far too heavy IMO. 40ish lbs? The (cheap) wheels on my Miata are 11 lbs, without any exotic materials or crazy engineering. Almost quadrupling the unsprung mass is a hard sell performance-wise.
- ginko 9y agoSo if the carbon fiber body is going to be a capacitor, wouldn't there be a risk of electric shock in case of some damage to it?
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoThat's where the magic autoheal comes in. But yeah, that would be a pretty big safety risk. It's a concept, these panels don't even exist yet. Actually it's not even sure if they'd even be possible. Safety only becomes a factor once they can start making them, I think.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoIf these concepts aren't constrained by what is currently (or ever) possible, why not make it capable of spaceflight? Or teleportation? Or a "submarine mode" a la James Bond's Lotus? Supercapacitor body panels seems positively dull in comparison.
- gene-h 9y agoNo, because the capacitors discharge very fast. The problem is they want capacitors that discharge fast and have a high energy density, which means that during such a crash we could get an explosion or maybe even an EMP.
- cjsuk 9y agoDoes it put itself out if it catches fire? Lambos always seem to be on fire.
- neals 9y agoI too, have lost my share of Lambo's in various fires.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoWhat could be more thrilling than driving a car that randomly bursts into flames? Makes sense to me.
- Yaggo 9y ago> Supercapacitors store energy physically and don’t generate the heat of lithium-ions, but as of yet they don’t offer as much power. This probably should read "don't offer as much energy". Almost every mainstream media article about electric cars mixes up these two concepts, sigh.
- criddell 9y agoFor a mainstream audience, the difference probably isn't that interesting. I certainly got the point they were trying to make.
- sandworm101 9y agoThey don't store energy physically. They trap electrons. They hold a static but still electrical energy differential. "Physically" sounds like they store mechanical energy. Either way, I'd hate to get into an accident in a car with capacitors build into its structure. Smash into a wall and there would be a bit of a lighting storm. Current carbon fiber cars burn like torches. With electrical energy stored in amongst that carbon, this car might go off like a bomb.
- gene-h 9y agoNo they actually mean power. Supercapacitors can energy faster than lithium batteries can(more power). While batteries have power densities hundreds of watts per kilogram, supercapacitors can release thousands of watts per kilogram. Now if we ignore the bullshit with carbon fiber supercapacitors it sounds like what lambroghini really wants is an energy storage system with more energy density and power density than we have today. Integrating something with a high power density into a vehicle frame might not be such a good idea. If we really do get capacitor level power densities, then the stored energy in the frame could be released really fast during a crash. If the stored energy is enough and released fast enough we essentially have a bomb. There is even the potential for the energy release to cause a relatively localized EMP.
- zdragnar 9y ago> Supercapacitors can energy faster than lithium batteries can(more power). You accidentally a verb.
- SlipperySlope 9y agoPretty to look at but when they get around to building this electric supercar, self-driving cars will be the norm. What is the nature of a self driving supercar? Is it to get where you are going a bit faster? Dead end in my opinion - except for an off-road manual-driving supercar.
- z3t4 9y agoIt would be cool with a car that self heals scratches and maybe even cleans itself.
- agumonkey 9y agoFunny, I threw the idea 2 days ago on IRC. > <someone> "regenerative crashing" lol MIT, please stop spying on #IRC, thanks
- laichzeit0 9y agoI drive a car with low clearance, but that Lamborghini is just ridiculously close to the ground. You’ll scrape the bumper just pulling out a regular drive way. It sure as hell will need to be “self healing” for someone to legitimately be driving that.
- arethuza 9y agoI suspect its probably not even meant to be road legal - like the Sesto Elemento.
- bri3d 9y agoLamborghini have had "lifters" as an option (and now stock, I believe) on all their cars since the Diablo in the 1990s. It's a horrendously unreliable hydraulic damper extension system, but it does solve for that issue. Press a button and the front of the car rises 2-3in to clear bumps and especially dips.
- lern_too_spel 9y agoThis doesn't work if the wheel wells hug around more than half the wheel and are fixed in place to the chassis. The real reason it's so low is that it's a concept not meant to be driven.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 9y agoMost of their concepts are like that; I wouldn't expect a model for sale to be that low.
- MrFoof 9y agoI have a car as low as an Aventador, without a front-axle lift, and a similarly bad approach angle. You don't take steep inclines head on. Period. You take them at an oblique angle, and get the closest wheel up first. It takes a few more seconds, but you don't scrape. I've gone up into entrances without issue where I've seen stock Toyota Camrys (which have nearly 2 inches more ground clearance and a much better approach angle) scrape. Take your time and it's a non-issue. My car has a sacrificial portion of the front splitter that's cheap to replace if I were to scrape it, but it's so easy to not scrape it it'll be a long time (decade plus?) before I need to.
- d--b 9y ago> Lamborghini also intends to make the supercapacitors out of carbon fiber panels that can be used to form the body of the car—so the Terzo Millennio draws energy from its own body. In other words: the car itself is the battery. So does that mean that if you happen to have an accident, there is a chance that a good chunk of your battery gets short circuited? That sounds somewhat dangerous...
- sp332 9y agoYeah, and I bet that carbon fiber burns real nice.
- virmundi 9y agoDon’t forget that it’s functionally equivalent to asbestos when it come to inducing cancer in the lungs. It doesn’t break down. Little carbon fibers just sit there and disturb the lung lining.
- wastedhours 9y agoYep, buy a container of carbon nanotubes and you can't move for warnings about wearing a mask and wearing gloves. 5g of SWNTs, and about 5kg of paper with warnings on :)
- usaphp 9y ago> That sounds somewhat dangerous... Good to see Lamborghini going back to their roots )
- mtgx 9y agoThat car is like fire! ... literally.
- hwillis 9y agoSomething on the order of 300 Wh/1-2 MJ, yeah. It would cause a large fire or a small explosion. That's around equivalent to a couple hand grenades.
- nasu 9y agoSelf healing? How many levels do I need to gain this skill?
- jcwilde 9y agoCorrected headline: "Lamborghini Unveils Borderline Science Fiction Plans for a Concept Car"
- bpicolo 9y agoDon't you want a car that can't traverse speed bumps though?
- lawlessone 9y agoIt's electric, couldn't we just leave some strong magnets under the road surface?
- excalibur 9y agoThis would be really fascinating if the technology was there and they had a working prototype. What they actually have is a bag of promises and a little graphic design.
- listic 9y agoJust what kind of roads is this kind of car made to drive on? I mean the clearance.
- ficklepickle 9y agoRoads? Where we're going, Marty, we don't need roads.
- drblast 9y agoThis article reads like the cars my friends and I would "design" when we were in third grade. Oh yeah? Mine is gonna have 800 horsepower and will be amphibious and have wings like the batmobile!
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoEven if you are pointing out this car is more fantasy than reality, I think this anecdote is more telling about the shift in perspective towards electric vehicles. When children design the Batmobile of the future, it used to feature a rocket launcher. Now it might have a "self-healing" battery. Before change can happen in reality, what we aspire to, or what we consider desirable has to change.
- stcredzero 9y agoBuckminster Fuller's serious proposals for his Dymaxion Car aren't very far off from that!
- andy_ppp 9y agoSo cool! Thanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car
- QAPereo 9y agoMy other car is a Dyson Sphere