Ingo Barenschee/Lamborghini
Automakers look many years into the future when developing new models, but even by that measure, Lamborghini is going to an extreme. Perhaps that is to be expected, given that it is Lamborghini were talking about. The Italian automaker wants to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in pondering supercars for the third millennium.
Lamborghini is hard at work on the technology and vehicles you’ll be lusting after in 2025, but wants to be even more forward-thinking than that. It remains to be seen just what Lamborghini expects from MIT, although anything that comes from the partnership probably would help Lamborghini’s siblings in the Volkswagen Group. Maurizio Reggiani, head of R&D at Lamborghini plans to spend the next few days talking to folks at the university to brainstorm ideas. “The super-sports car is always a laboratory for the future,”Reggiani says.
While the “1000-year view” that Reggiani discusses sounds like nothing more than a line in a press release, it is fun to consider where things might go in the next decade or three. MIT excels at robotics, for example, so perhaps an autonomous supercar? Not likely says Reggiani. He believes Lamborghini owners always will insist on driving, but he can see semi-autonomous safety tech playing a role. He favors technology that helps drivers push their limits and sharpen their skills—a view Audi, which VW also owns, has expressed. “Autonomous has a different meaning for Lamborghini,” he says.
Lamborghini is seen as a leader in the development and use of carbon fiber in road cars, and MIT’s work with advanced materials is another potential area of collaboration. The automaker has a lab (Lambo Lab!) in Seattle, where it works with Boeing on composite materials. Lamborghini could explore advanced bio-materials with MIT, that mimic the bones in birds, which are strong yet delicate, or perhaps even shape-shifting alloys. “I don’t know whether they’re third millennium,” says Serenella Sferza, co-director of the MIT Italy Program. “They might be fourth.”
She’s kidding, of course, but Lamborghini must look to the future. Tightening fuel economy and emissions regulations have automakers embracing efficiency. MIT engineers could help Lamborghini move away from V8, V10, and V12 engines. In an announcement that is almost entirely coincidental, MIT just took another step toward practical, clean, nuclear energy. With a 1,000-year timeline, Lamborghini has plenty of time to develop Mr. Fusion.
1 / 6 Spanish boutique design shop Bengala Automotive has crafed the F12 Caballería, an extra Ferrari-y take on the F12berlinetta.Bengala Automotive
2 / 6 Step one: fashion every visible part of the car out of carbon fiber. Bengala Automotive
3 / 6 Step two: restyle the car, giving it sharper, more aggressive lines.Bengala Automotive
4 / 6 Those lines are apparently inspired by Ferrari’s GT3 race cars.Bengala Automotive
5 / 6 Bengala’s designer made the air intakes bigger, and appears to have carved the front end with a machete.Bengala Automotive
6 / 6 “We bring to our customers an interpretation of their desires, based on their dreams,” says Bengala CEO and founder Shoghi Saeidnia.Bengala Automotive
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1 / 6 Spanish boutique design shop Bengala Automotive has crafed the F12 Caballería, an extra Ferrari-y take on the F12berlinetta.Bengala Automotive
2 / 6 Step one: fashion every visible part of the car out of carbon fiber. Bengala Automotive
3 / 6 Step two: restyle the car, giving it sharper, more aggressive lines.Bengala Automotive
4 / 6 Those lines are apparently inspired by Ferrari’s GT3 race cars.Bengala Automotive
5 / 6 Bengala’s designer made the air intakes bigger, and appears to have carved the front end with a machete.Bengala Automotive
6 / 6 “We bring to our customers an interpretation of their desires, based on their dreams,” says Bengala CEO and founder Shoghi Saeidnia.Bengala Automotive
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7
The exquisitely swoopy, nonsensically named Ferrari F12berlinetta offers lots of ways to ratchet up the $320,000 base price. Old-timey colors like “verde British” and “Rosso dino.” A carbon fiber front wing. Extra prancing horse badges. Tinted rear windows (in a two-seater). Chrome on the grille. A “handy fire extinguisher.” You can even buy the F12TDF, the limited edition, track-dedicated version of Ferrari’s flagship.
Yet none of it slakes that yearning for what the ancient Romans would have called magis equi frementis. Today’s Italians know it as più cavallino rampante. In the American parlance, MORE FERRARI.
For that, you can have the F12 Caballería from Spanish boutique design shop Bengala Automotive. Of course, the first way to make MORE FERRARI out of a car that, at 731 horsepower offers no shortage of Ferrari, is to fashion every visible part of the car out of carbon fiber. The second way is to restyle the car, giving it sharper, more aggressive lines inspired by Ferrari’s GT3 race cars.
Bengala’s designer made the air intakes bigger, and appears to have carved the front end with a machete. Where the F12berlinetta is elegant, the Caballería is aggressive. Just the thing for some Ferrari customers.
“We bring to our customers an interpretation of their desires, based on their dreams,” says company CEO and founder Shoghi Saeidnia. “We mastered and created a unique piece of design and engineering.” That’s the fancy way of saying, “We added some Ferrari to your Ferrari for you.”
No word on the price, but given that Bengala plans to build just 10, expect to pay MORE FERRARI money.
General Motors
The year was 1966, and General Motors was working on the future. From January to October, some 200 people worked in three shifts on the Electrovan, the first electric vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It had room for two, weighed 7,100 pounds, and could hit 60 mph in a not-quite-compelling 30 seconds.
But it was the first of its kind, a new way of doing things. Hydrogen-powered cars can be refueled in just a few minutes, are just as capable as their gas-loving counterparts, and emit nothing but water as a byproduct.
Today, GM heralded the Electrovan’s 50th birthday, noting it has since spent $2.5 billion developing fuel cell technology.
Rad, right? Yup, until you realize that for all that time and money, the automaker has made effectively zero progress getting humanity to ditch fossil fuels for hydrogen.
Plenty of folks are still pursuing this dream. Honda’s offering the Clarity Fuel Cell sedan in Japan. Toyota’s Mirai is available in the US, starting at nearly $60,000. Chevy just made a hydrogen-powered pickup for the US Army.
But no one’s solved the fundamental problems with hydrogen power: There’s no real infrastructure to get the fuel around the country and into cars. And while hydrogen’s the most abundant element in the universe, making it into a useable fuel often involves natural gas—hardly a zero-emissions process.
So yeah, GM marking 50 years of working on the stuff is like a a PhD celebrating his tenth year working on that thesis—and insisting he’ll be done real soon.
Tesla
Ludicrous mode just got loonier.
Tesla Motors announced today its new Model S P100D model will hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds, thanks to a bigger, 100-kWh battery. That’s an upgrade over the P90D’s 2.8 seconds, and just one tenth of a second slower than what the million-dollar Ferrari LaFerrari can do. Except that this is a four-door sedan. The P100D version of the Model X SUV will hit 60 mph in 2.9 seconds.
That’s the best stomach swirl for the money the auto industry has ever offered, and a terrific example of how much better electric cars are than internal combustion engines at delivering torque. The bigger battery will also offer 315 miles of range (up from just under 300) in the sedan, Tesla says—but not if you spend all your time enjoying that acceleration.
Of course, with great power comes great pricing. Well, great for Tesla, which is charging a base price of $134,500 for its fastest car ever. The P90D with “ludicrous mode” starts at $119,500. The Model X with the bigger pack starts at $135,500. If you’ve ordered a now measly-feeling P90D but haven’t gotten it yet, you can upgrade for $10,000. If you’re already driving one and now feel utterly lame, you can have the extra power installed, but it’ll cost you $20,000.
In June, Tesla introduced the cheaper Model S 60, powered by a 75-kWh pack running software that limits its capacity by 20 percent. Customers who later decide they want more power can hand over $9,000, for which Tesla hits a button to update the car’s software and “unlock” the battery’s extra capability.
It’s easy to imagine Tesla will do something similar with this bigger pack, for buyers who aren’t quite ready to spend the extra cash. Spend P90D money today, and once the 2.8 second sprint to 60 mph loses its edge, break out the credit card.
Is a 0 to 60 mph time improvement of .3 seconds worth the extra cash? Tesla hopes so, because it says every dollar it can make off its luxury models will help fund its efforts to build the long-awaited, affordable Model 3, which should enter production late next year.
The BladeGliderNissan
Over the past few years, the world has gotten to know some pretty cool electric vehicles: ludicrously quick Teslas, solar-powered planes, sport bikes with Italian styling. To add to the pile, Nissan now introduces the BladeGlider, a Zeus juice-powered razor blade on four wheels.
Released in Rio de Janeiro this week, the prototype version of a concept Nissan first showed in 2013 is a 268-horsepower sports car with a heart of green, powered by a 220kW lithium-ion battery.
The BladeGlider comes with rear-hinged dihedral doors (because conventional openings have no place in the future) and in two colors: “cyber green” and “stealth orange” (because … deer can’t see it?). The open top lets everyone know who’s releasing the fewest emissions in town, and the three-seat configuration borrowed from the famed McLaren F1 allows room for two passengers. Roll up to the club like the sustainable Liberace you are.
You shouldn’t expect Nissan to actually put this thing on the market, but combined with the successful, all-electric Leaf and its leading efforts in the race towards autonomous driving, it’s clear the Japanese automaker’s girding up for the future.
TMB Art Metal
Bugatti did not design the Veyron to serve any practical purpose. It designed the car to stack up superlatives like a pre-schooler piles blocks: heedlessly. The Veyron was the fastest, most powerful, fanciest, and most completely unnecessary car on the planet for the entirely of its 10-year run. Bugatti made just 450 of them, sold them all for an average of $2.6 million apiece, and reportedly lost money doing it.
You almost certainly won’t ever know the God-like power of driving a Veyron, let alone that of its even more gobsmacking successor, the Chiron. But TMB Art Metal will sell you a bit of Veyron, fashioned into a pair of cufflinks. The British firm makes these snazzy accessories from the front wheel of a Veyron damaged in a crash. (Don’t judge; 1,200 horsepower is difficult to control.) Just $385!
The cufflinks won’t carry you to 200 mph in under 25 seconds, but given that they cost roughly 385,000 times more than a perfectly serviceable pair of plastic buttons, they’re every bit as impractical and excessive as the car that can.
An exterior view of a Tesla showroom in Corte Madera, California, on April 4, 2016.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Elon Musk, a man not known for subtlety or lack of ambition, has a plan to dominate the transportation sector. He doesn’t call it that, of course. He gave it the far more benign name Master Plan, Part Deux.
Beyond creating a vertically integrated company that builds electric vehicles, batteries to store the power to propel them, and the solar panels to generate that power, he wants to create whole new vehicle lineups. Some of them sound like they’re in advanced stages of development.
The plan, which Musk posted to the Tesla Motors blog on Wednesday afternoon, comes a decade after Part One, which essentially laid out the company’s plan to make boatloads of money with the Model S so it could produce the more affordable Model 3. Having crossed those things off his to-do list—while also outfitting an automobile factory, a battery factory, and, oh, running SpaceX and Solar City—Musk has moved on to the second phase of his plan.
Even as the company scrambles to produce the Model 3 sedan that Musk remains convinced will bring EVs to the masses, Tesla Motors, according to the Master Plan, Part Deux, sees itself creating a compact SUV and “a new kind of pickup truck.” Beyond that, Musk says, “there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport.”
He means big-rigs and buses, and says both are the early stages of development—and could be revealed next year. “We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate.”
Now, electric buses are nothing new. San Francisco is crawling with them. But a Tesla bus? You know it would be gorgeous. Musk says they’d be smaller than you’re used to, but offer plenty of room for wheelchairs, strollers, and bikes. They’ll be quick enough to keep up with traffic, and deliver a smooooth ride.
Where things get really wild, though, is his claim that Tesla buses would not have to stick to pre-determined routes like the busses that rumble past your office. A little intelligent planning with smartphones and mapping (think = Uber Pool) can deliver people right to their door. He’s even put some thought into what people without smartphones will do. They can use fixed summon buttons at existing bus stops, which will otherwise be redundant.
Looking a little further into the future, Tesla will continue developing its autonomous technology so all of these cars and trucks and buses do the driving. And then come the autonomous ride-sharing services in which Telsa owners let strangers borrow their cars or Tesla operates urban fleets “ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.”
Individually, none of these ideas is at all radical. You’d be hard-pressed to find an automaker that isn’t following Google in the race to autonomous cars, Daimler recently unveiled an autonomous big-rig, and a Tesla co-founder has developed a pretty sweet electric garbage truck. What is staggering here is the scale. Musk wants to do it all, immediately, and tie it all together in a cohesive system.
It’s so crazy it’s brilliant. And if Musk’s record so far is any indication, don’t bet against him pulling it off.
FORD
Spoiler alert: Old Yeller, the most loyal of hounds, gets rabies and dies at the end of the book/movie.
So “Ole Yeller” feels like a weird moniker for Ford’s latest special edition Mustang, until you realize it’s not named for that most loyal of hounds, at least not directly. The name actually comes from the famed P-51D Mustang fighter plane still flown by stunt pilot Bob Hoover. And it actually makes sense once you know Ford plans to auction off the ride and give the proceeds to charity.
Anyway, on to the car. This Ole Yeller is actually a Shelby GT350 Mustang, powered by a 5.2-liter V8 engine that barks out 526 horsepower and 429 pound-paws of torque. Because there’s some measure of justice in this world, the driver controls all that power with a six-speed manual transmission.
To make this GT350 extra special, Ford threw in “Ole Yeller” accents and badging, Recaro racing seats, and gauges inspired by plane cockpits. Of course, there’s extra carbon fiber, and the mirrors apparently project images of the P-51.
Just don’t park it near any rabid wolves.
Mercedes-Benz
People often derisively compared electric cars to golf carts until Tesla Motors proved EVs could be swift and sexy. Mercedes-Benz wants to do the same for the lowly golf cart.
The Germans believe golfers need a more “premium” mode of getting around the links. If you can suspend your skepticism, the Mercedes-Benz Style Edition Garia Golf Car makes a compelling case. It has fancy wheels and a carbon fiber roof and Mercedes describes it as “sporty and well-balanced,” which seems like a stretch. The rear spoiler doubles as a golf bag holder. Of course.
Inside, a 10.1-inch touchscreen keeps tabs on your range, (up to 50 miles), lets you select sport (!) and eco modes, and displays a course map and scorecard. A mini fridge under the leather seat keeps your beers cold, and cupholders keep them from toppling when you get up on it.
What you don’t get is a 3-pointed star. This ride wears the logo of Garia, the golf cart manufacturer that Mercedes worked with. There’s no word on price yet, but this is a case where asking that question means you can’t afford one. They’ll no doubt be popular in Florida.
1 / 3 Ferrari says the convertible version of the LaFerrari is for those “who refuse to compromise on the joy of al fresco driving even when at the wheel of a supercar.”Ferrari
2 / 3 The Italians won’t reveal any specs on the new hybrid ride until the Paris Motor Show in October, but say they’ve modified the chassis to be just as rigid as the original coupe, with a tweaked design to make up for the havoc wreaked on the aerodynamics by an open top.Ferrari
3 / 3 You can bet your offshore bank account that without a roof in the way, the price will go up, too.Ferrari
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1 / 3 Ferrari says the convertible version of the LaFerrari is for those “who refuse to compromise on the joy of al fresco driving even when at the wheel of a supercar.”Ferrari
2 / 3 The Italians won’t reveal any specs on the new hybrid ride until the Paris Motor Show in October, but say they’ve modified the chassis to be just as rigid as the original coupe, with a tweaked design to make up for the havoc wreaked on the aerodynamics by an open top.Ferrari
3 / 3 You can bet your offshore bank account that without a roof in the way, the price will go up, too.Ferrari
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