Jesse Crosse The race to make better EV batteries

RICHARD LANE

Since the days of the Diablo, four-wheel drive has been a dynamic pillar for Lamborghini and the result has often been cars lacking in adjustability and with more of an understeer balance than is appropriate.

But with the Huracán Evo RWD, matters suddenly improved and those gains were cemented with the playful and superbly progressive Huracán STO. So why is Lambo bucking an industry trend away from rear-driven supercars?

Technical chief Rouven Mohr said it is all part of the plan, because customer tastes are moving away from spec-sheet superiority and towards drivability and fun.

He said: “At the beginning, when the control systems were not on the same level [as the power], you had to ensure the car was stable and safe. For a mid-engined car, this is a much bigger challenge than [for anything] front engined and with rearwheel drive. Therefore, the first focus was to have a car the customer can handle.”

So that explains why every model from the Murciélago on has launched with AWD, but why change now? “Well, in the meantime, the steps in electronic integration, setup knowledge and so on have been increased dramatically, and now it’s possible to have a car with 631bhp and rear drive that’s so easy to control that every customer can have fun,” said Mohr.

“Also, if you look at the super-sports car field, there is a little bit of change, for sure. In the past, everything was oriented towards lap time performance. But the cars are so incredibly fast you can’t drive them to the limit on the road. Therefore, we decided to offer another aspect of the Lamborghini brand, one related to driver involvement and controllability.”

traction control (which, depending on the driving mode selected, allows generous yaw but only when the car believes the driver intends it). This all goes through the electronic LDVI ‘brain’ that was first seen on the 2019 Huracán Evo.

Semi-slick Bridgestone Sport tyres (305mm wide at the rear) are wrapped around newly designed 20in wheels, which cover standard-fitment carbon-ceramic brakes with a more road-focused compound than those of the STO.

What the Tecnica lacks compared with the STO is the senior supercar’s wild aero package, weight-saving regime and clamshell bodywork. However, at 1379kg, the new car weighs 10kg less than the Huracán Evo RWD and places a similar emphasis on aerodynamic efficiency. The new wing contributes to 35% more downforce than the Evo RWD, yet the Tecnica also manages 20% less drag and the high-exit hexagonal exhaust tips are flanked by large apertures that sit beneath the contoured taillights and help expel heat from the engine bay.

While the Tecnica is as wide and tall as the Huracán Evo, it’s 61mm longer, with an extended glasshouse in the style of the Essenza SCV12. RICHARD LANE

Those big pipes make less noise than the STO’s

UNDER THE SKIN

JESSE CROSSE NEWS HOW EV BATTERY RESEARCHERS ARE CHASING MATERIAL GAINS

MAYBE IT’S NO surprise but the worldwide boom in electric vehicles is spawning furious activity in battery development. Work is going on to improve existing lithium ion technology (such as solidstate batteries that do away with liquid electrolyte), but determined efforts are being made to perfect the use of more diverse ingredients, too. Most are still at the research stage, and although it’s true that attempts to develop better batteries in the past haven’t amounted to anything tangible, there’s now a lot more incentive and fi nancial backing to try to make game-changing ideas work.

One of those is the lithium air cell, a sort of halfway house between a conventional battery and a hydrogen fuel cell. The man who really started the ball rolling on lithium air cells is Professor Peter Bruce, a chemist who succeeded in prototyping a single lithium air cell as part of a four-year project that ran from 2007 to 2011 at the University of St Andrews. Lithium air cells use oxygen from the air as part of the chemical reaction that goes on during charging and recharging, removing the need to carry chemicals around in the battery.

Success would mean greater capacity than we have today but overcoming a lack of effi ciency and poor cycle life (the number of charges and discharges a battery can take before beginning to degrade) have proved diffi cult to overcome beyond double fi gures. That said, scientists around the world are still on the case and, earlier this year, researchers at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) claimed to have developed a lithium air battery with an energy density of 500Wh per kilogram, roughly twice that of the best lithium ion batteries. No mention has been made of the number of charge and discharge cycles it can achieve, though.

Scientists at Illinois Institute of Technology said last year that they have succeeded in overcoming the problem, having achieved 1200 charge and discharge cycles in a prototype battery. Reduced cycle life is due to the other elements in air, such as carbon, nitrogen and water, which also react with lithium and produce a contaminating layer that prevents oxygen reaching the positive electrode and using up lithium. The team developed an electrolyte that stops this from happening and absorbs any impurities.

Other technologies are gathering pace, too. Battery startup company Theion, whose CEO Ulrich Ehmes is experienced in industrialising battery production, has developed a lithium sulphur positive electrode (cathode) that, it claims, can triple the range given by conventional lithium ion cells. Sulphur is an abundant element and in this case replaces nickel and cobalt. The use of cobalt in batteries is controversial because of the environmental impact of the waste generated from mining it, not to mention the associated human cost.

Theion claims its sulphur-based technology is 99% cheaper to source and making battery cells using it consumes 99% less energy. The company says 16 patents are pending on processes to make the cathodes for what it calls its ‘Crystal Battery’, based on the fact that sulphur exists naturally as a crystal. Theion will build and supply batteries for testing by aerospace customers this year. Automotive use is expected for 2024 and gigafactoryscale production by 2025.

The International Energy Agency predicts there will be 245 million electric vehicles in the world by 2030, all needing batteries.

NEW TECH GETS GREEN LIGHT

Ford has been using a Kuga equipped with prototype control systems to automatically change traffic lights to green as it approaches. The idea is to provide a clear route for emergency services and avoid crossing red lights. The tests were carried out using C-V2X (cellular vehicleto-everything) technology. The Kuga also tested daily driving scenarios, receiving a signal from traffic lights and modulating its speed using cruise control to always arrive when they are green.