When Porsche announced the Porsche Taycan Turbo – their first electric car – Elon Musk was quick to point out the error in the name.

The car doesn’t contain a turbocharged engine, you see.

This fact launched a debate in comments sections everywhere (including our own) as people argued about the lithium-ion battery-powered Taycan, and pledged their allegiance to the turbocharged engine that can be found in many a luxury supercar.

Lamborghini seems to be in agreement that the batteries currently favoured in electric vehicles just won’t do, which is why the Italian automaker has decided to focus on developing a way to make supercars emissions-free, without using the lithium-ion batteries other carmakers are relying on.

Over to CNN:

Today’s battery technology simply won’t do, insists Maurizio Reggiani (above), chief technical officer at Lamborghini. Batteries are too heavy, too bulky and they can’t perform at a high level for long enough.

After a lap or two around a twisting race track at speeds reaching 160 miles per hour, where fast acceleration and hard braking are repeated over and over, a battery can begin to give out. Also, batteries are bulky and heavy and weight is the enemy of high performance.

Lamborghini has declared war on that enemy by working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on two possible solutions.

One is a new form of battery made from carbon that can actually make up some of the internal body parts of the car so they don’t add size or weight. The other is a different kind of energy storage altogether: a supercapacitor.

“A supercapacitor with the same power is three times lighter than the normal lithium-ion battery,” explained Reggiani. “This is important because, in terms of packaging and in terms of weight, it gives me a big advantage in a super sports car.”

The main advantage of a supercapacitor is that it can deliver a bigger jolt of power, pound for pound, than batteries.

Lamborghini and MIT […] announced this week that MIT researchers have invented a new material that could allow the creation of supercapacitors capable of holding two to three times as much energy as the supercapacitors now being produced.

Progress, then, although some are calling Lamborghini’s goals a “long shot”. Unfortunately, today’s technology is very limited, but that’s what research teams are for.

As for “long shots”, the company has a history or surprising even their harshest critics. You can read about that here, but all of this could change the game in the electric car field:

…as far as Reggiani’s concerned, the usual approaches to making an electric car won’t work for Lamborghini.

“The full electric vehicle, for us, must be like this,” he said. “Otherwise, it cannot be a Lamborghini.”

I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

One thing we know for sure is that when they produce that first electric car, it’s going to be groundbreaking.

[source:cnn]