Showing posts with label concept. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concept. Show all posts
Lamborghini has revealed the Terzo Millennio, a concept supercar

A little over a year ago, Lamborghini announced that it was collaborating with students and professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on future car technologies.
The first fruit of their collaboration has been revealed in concept form today, and boy, it's something else. It's an all-electric hypercar called the Terzo Millennio—Italian for "Third Millennium"—and it's packed with all sorts of wild tech.

With the Terzo Millennio, Lamborghini is attempting to answer a seemingly simple question asked by the company's chief technical officer, Marurizio Reggiani—"what is the super sports car of the future?" For Lamborghini, that means an electric car, but one unlike anything else we've ever seen.

Lamborghini wants an electric car that can run three or four laps of the Nurburgring Nordschleife in a row at full tilt, then completely recharge within a few minutes. And all the while, it has to provide the performance and emotional experience you expect from a Lamborghini.
Lamborghini's collaboration with MIT is focused in two areas—energy-storage systems, and material science. The results are as crazy-futuristic as you'd expect from MIT professors and their PhD. students.

Prof. Mircea Dinca of MIT's chemistry department, and his laboratory, the Dinca Research Lab, worked on the energy-storage system for the Terzo Millennio. Instead of conventional batteries, the Terzo Millenio uses supercapacitors, which can provide great power and recover and harvest kinetic energy at the same time. On top of that, supercapacitors don't age as quickly batteries, making them ideal for car use.

Supercapacitors don't yet have quite the same level energy density as the batteries used in electric cars, though, so that's where Prof. Dinca comes in. His lab is working towards creating parity between supercapacitors and batteries.


These supercapacitors will drive four wheel-mounted electric motors, that give the Terzo Millennio all-wheel drive, and wild torque vectoring capabilities. Lamborghini will soon debut a conventional plug-in hybrid drivetrain for the Urus, but this concept shows where the company really wants to head with electrification.



Superyacht Project Zephyr is Absolutely Stunning

The new 180-foot yacht Zephyr, designed by Federico Fiorentino and built by Rossinavi, reaches 32 knots but its high-performance hull is designed to cross the Atlantic.

Federico Fiorentino’s new 180-foot Zephyr concept makes use of a combination of gentle curves popular in ’60s automotive designs and taut lines to create a long, streamlined profile, embellished with stainless-steel accents. The Rossinavi-built yacht will have a Fast Displacement XL 500 hull by Van Oossanen Naval Architects. The XL running surface is the next step forward for the Dutch firm’s patented fast displacement hull form. It provides 20 percent more speed over the previous generation and, perhaps more critical to the owner, 20 percent more interior space.

On Zephyr, the hull is particularly noteworthy: With 16V 4000 MTU engines, it will deliver a top speed of 32 knots. At 12 knots the yacht has a transatlantic range of 3,540 nautical miles with fuel consumption of less than four gallons per nautical mile. One of Fiorentino’s primary goals was to put the owners and guests beside the water without using a conventional beach club. Instead, Fiorentino created a 990-square-foot beach area that covers the entire aft deck that is connected to a 300-square-foot raised terrace. With the huge swim platform deployed, the focal point of the stern becomes its 18-foot swimming pool.  The views are exceptional from every point on this deck, from the raised terrace to the transparent edges of the pool.

The deck above also has a large open space, with sunbeds and lounges on the rear portion, and a dining table for 12, a bar, and a barbecue beneath the overhang. This outer deck connects to an enclosed saloon and pilothouse. Up front, the foredeck also has a generous social space, with lounges and sunbeds.

The master suite is located on the main deck, just forward of the saloon and dining area. The palatial design includes a separate office, bedroom with lounge area on one side and vanity on the other, walk-in closet, and a full-beam en-suite bathroom. On the deck below, the five guest staterooms also have their own en-suites.

“What really makes Zephyr unique is the mixture of livable space, high performance, low fuel consumption, and her aggressive-but-harmonious look,” says Fiorentino. “The yacht is intended as a futuristic piece of technology, but with a huge personality and presence.”