Bull-breeding in the Third Millennium
Expressing Power in Electric Cars
Motoring enthusiast, Wayne Batty, contemplates the modern problem of how to design an electric vehicle with the same aesthetic appeal to power as a fossil-fuelled sports car.
The world could do with more of these two things: peace and Lamborghinis. (I was going to go with love and beer, but too much of either can get you into a pickle.) So, while peace needs no explanation, the Raging Bulls are there because they make people smile and dream and sometimes even provoke the odd benign expletive – Countach!
The wedgy, cab-forward visual drama of the Countach has informed the design of everyv12-powered Lamborghini since. From Diablo through Murcielago to Aventador, each an ever more extreme reimagining of the original, though still all angular, angry beasts packaged tightly around big-bore 12-cylinder engines. With doorstopper aerodynamics, industrial-spec air vents, outrageous width-to-height ratio, and scissor-action door theatre, Lamborghinis are style statements of speed and excess; mobile monuments to the petrol-quaffing internal combustion gods of fire and thunder.
Muscle cars all have their own expressions of power, from bonnet bulges and shaker hoods, to quad exhaust outlets, (or better still, a set of side exit exhaust pipes a la an original Dodgeviper or Shelby Cobra). And, nothing says “I can burn fuel faster than all y’all” like a blower sticking out the bonnet. Trouble is, the coming electric age has no use for exhaust pipes or cylinders, and the only superchargers it needs will be lined up along the world’s motorways, ready to juice up your battery while you wolf a pie and visit the ablutions.
This brings me to the recent reveal of the Terzo Millennio, a Lamborghini concept car powered by next-gen supercapacitors, with a body structure made from energystoring nanomaterial composites – countach! Clearly this Lambo will not be zipping silently down a street near you any time soon, but it does start a new dialogue for the brand, beginning with how to express power in an electric car.
As most carmakers began hiding their petrol-fed motors beneath branded plastic covers years ago, the days of drooling over the chromed inlets of an Alfa’s V6 are long gone. But, what of the Terzo Millennio? With no great lump of engine-shaped metal to expose, the opportunity exists to develop a whole new power aesthetic. Now, I am not suggesting a Delorean, Back To The Future level of obviousness, though it is scary how easily a few neon backlit cables and two wine racks sticking out the boot convinced everyone it was alternately powered, even if a flux capacitor was (and still is) vapourware.
Lamborghini does not have an easy task at hand. Batteries will simply never be as sexy as compressors, turbines, or jets. That is probably why Lamborghini chose to emphasise the four in-wheel electric motors as the ‘source’ of power, endowing Terzo with wheels patterned and specifically lit to give the appearance of hand-wound electric motors. But, while the required angles, angry vents, and strip lighting wrapped in an extremely cabforward wedge are all correct and present, will we still love a bull without a heart? Here’s hoping more world peace gives us a chance to find out.