Let’s talk about cars for a moment. 2017 was an incredible year for automotive technology. So many great vehicles were announced, from canyon-carving demons like the McLaren 720s to brand saviors like the house-sized Lincoln Navigator. 2017 was also the year of the Chevy Bolt, an all-electric car that cost less than $30,000 and won Motor Trend’s 2017 car of the year award. This was also the year that Tesla delivered its first Model 3 cars, the new lower-cost model that they hope will drive electric cars into the mainstream.

While many of those announcements are great, perhaps the most important vehicle announcement was barely a blip on the radar of the automotive landscape: A simple press release from Lamborghini that they are working with MIT on a concept vehicle called the Terzo Millennio, a test platform for future technology. Buried in that news with just a small little mention is the information explaining how this car will include innovations in materials which would act as the structure of the car (the frame) and the energy storage medium for the car (the battery) at the same time. That’s not something to be overlooked – that’s a sonic boom of potential because it speaks to the problem that every electric vehicle manufacturer is going to have to face: the battery. As it exists today, the battery is a terrible technology for energy storage, and until a real breakthrough comes to market, we are going to be moving at a snail’s pace.

1800 Technology In Your 2018 Smartphone

The Battery, at its core, is almost exactly the same today as it was in 1800, when it was first developed. The only real difference between the battery powering an electric car and the first battery ever created is the material used for energy storage. That is totally nuts. It’s the energy-storage equivalent of still using a horse-drawn carriage for all of our transportation needs. Batteries, to be blunt, are holding us back. They’re heavy, inefficient, environmentally unfriendly and, worst of all, they don’t improve at the rate of other technology. Where microchips double in speed every 18 months, batteries have ever only improved at approximately 8% per year, according to Seth Fletcher’s book Bottled Lightning. Yet, batteries — or, more precisely, portable energy storage — are critical to almost every major technological innovation. Something has to be done, some new scientific breakthrough has to materialize.

Back To The Lamborghini

By itself, the Terzo announcement isn’t really that important. What’s important is that it indicates that companies are starting to look at the problem from a variety of directions, and they’re starting to place bets that might herald an incredible set of breakthroughs.

The premise of the Lamborghini announcement is that they’re working to eliminate the battery altogether. In its place, there might be an entirely new material, such as graphene, which would form the frame of the car and store the energy as well. Graphene is the thinnest material ever discovered — less than one-millionth the width of a human hair. It’s ridiculously strong, close to 200 times the strength of steel. 

Given its strength, one can imagine using graphene to replace current vehicle materials. It would cut down weight and increase rigidity. Let’s do some math, using a Tesla Model S as a base for comparison. The current Tesla aluminum frame weighs in at around 800 pounds, and replacing that aluminum with graphene might bring it to as little as 100. Exterior panels are currently 200 pounds, but with graphene, they could be as light as 20. Take another 300 pounds out of miscellaneous material like wheels, seats, paneling etc., and we save a total of almost 30% of the car weight, and because the batteries now have to move 30% less mass we get a corresponding 30% improvement in range. So even with just basic structural replacements, new materials like graphene would revolutionize electric cars.