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Lamborghini and MIT are partnering to develop technology and products that should make future Lambos faster, lighter, less expensive (perchance), and peradventure more crash-resistant. Even though Lamborghini is part of the huge Volkswagen family, supercar companies need to continuously improve if they intend to survive and prosper.

This week, Lamborghini and Massachusetts of Technology announced a three-year partnership to underwrite 50 students studying abroad in Italy, working with Lamborghini on research and development. Much of the work is expected to be in developing composites that brand the automobile lighter and stronger.

Lamborghini Huracan

MIT already has car projects under manner

Just final fall (2015), MIT entered a partnership with Toyota to further develop self-driving cars. It's part of a $i billion programme that includes Stanford as well. The two coastal cities, along with Carnegie Mellon, are among the university leaders in democratic driving research.

With MIT, much of the piece of work will exist in Cambridge, forth with the year-abroad program for students. Italia is already a popular junior-year-abroad destination for American students, especially for art history majors who often minor in espresso and smoking-to-stay-skinny.

MIT as well compares its Lamborghini-Italy program to i formed a decade ago between Boeing and the University of Washington which helped Boeing devise a faster method of creating carbon-fiber parts. Ordinarily information technology's a painstaking, multi-step process, far slower than stamping a slice of metallic in a press.

Lamborghini LF 3-4 red

What Lamborghini needs

The visitor says it wants to explore improve and more cost-effective blended parts. Supercars already accept some carbon fiber parts, whether roof, hood, and trunk panels to save weight and lower the car's center of gravity, or tubs (the chassis) that are ultra crash-resistant. There are already carbon fiber panels on Lamborghini's Aventador.

Carbon fiber wheels would be a worthwhile project, since the greatest functioning gains come from reducing unsprung weight, meaning the tires, wheels, and brakes. Merely information technology's hard to monitor carbon fiber wheels for hidden damage and it's likely CF road wheels would kickoff be a lodge racing or track days option.

The company also needs to work on hybrid designs where the electric motors act as turbochargers, even if the car has physical turbochargers too. Electric motors provide torque instantly and at low rpm, while turbos need several tenths of a second to spool up.

Lamborghini, similar all automakers, is aware that Germany's legislature voted to push that land, and perhaps the entire EU (which oft follows Germany's pb on things automotive) to move across combustion engines by 2030. Which means even more R&D work on EVs, or hydrogen fuel cells that bulldoze electric motors.