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Lamborghini goes from carbon fiber to carbon neutral [w/video]

Draw up a list in your mind of automakers striving to "save the environment," and you might be forgiven for not ranking Lamborghini very high on impressions alone. After all, it only makes supercars with double-digit cylinder counts, displacing over 5.0 liters, and producing in excess of 600 horsepower. Hardly what you'd characterize as "green" modes of transportation, then. And though it recently showed a hybrid sports car concept, it has opted next to build an SUV instead. However the Raging Bull marque is out to rehabilitate its image by changing the reality of its carbon footprint. It's just not about to do so by watering down the supercars for which it is known. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." – Lamborghini CEO, Stephan Winkelmann This week the Italian automaker officially opened its new Trigeneration Plant – which is not, lest you think otherwise, an assembly facility spanning multiple eras of production. It's a new power plant, built on the site of the company's headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, that will generate its electricity, heating, and cooling, all from the same source of natural gas. The plant has an installed (potential) capacity of 1.2 megawatts, and will (practically speaking) be capable of generating over 25,000 MWh every year. That'd be enough to power all the houses in Sant'Agata, the otherwise sleepy town which Lamborghini shares with about 7,000 residents. The clean-burning facility is estimated to cut out 820 tons of CO2 every year, and by 2017 is slated to run on biofuel to raise that figure to a claimed 5,600 tons per year. The question is, who cares? Sure, people buying EVs and free-range chickens want to be assured that their buying habits fit their environmental conscience, but does the average Lamborghini buyer really care if their new supercar came from an environmentally friendly factory? "If we are going to do the things only because of the importance first thing for the customer, we would not be here anymore," Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann told us during roundtable discussion at the opening of the Trigeneration Plant. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." "It would be ridiculous if you would say we are going to save the world.

Lamborghini's Revuelto enjoys new high-tech build processes

Lamborghini exited the old age with a number of big bangs. The Aventador not only got an Ultimate special edition, but also a couple of one-offs with the Invencible and Autentica. The sold-out Huracan is rushing into the sunset in two directions, one on the road with the 60th Anniversary models, the other on the dirt with the sensational Sterrato. The brand with all the bull enters the new age with even more pop, attaching an electric motor to its hallmark V12, and remaking the Sant'Agata Bolognese factory that produces the hybrid V12 and the Revuelto two-door wrapped around it. In a video called "Building the Dream," various members of the Lamborghini family explain how the production process have improved so that everyone can ensure they're building a better car, better. A fair bit of the Manufattura Lamborghini story reminded us of Maserati's high-tec production overhaul at the Viale Ciro Menotti facility for the Nettuno V6 in the MC20. Computerized tools deliver repeatable build standards, the engine is built over a set of stations that include new seal testing and a final testing room, the transmission getting its own set of stations and build teams. There's also a sustainability story inside and outside, with new machines and software enabling more utilization of hides for interiors, CO2-neutral energy runs the plant, and not far away, there's a small forest with bee hives.   The most impressive bit might be the automaker saying the new setup increases the customization options. With Lamborghini building one-offs for clients, we didn't realize there was anything left to customize. The one line that stuck out to us was when Chief Manufacturing Officer Ranieri Niccoli said there's a new V12 assembly line "that in the future can accommodate different engines." That's called foreshadowing. While we wait to find out what that sentence could mean, grab some gelato and have a watch of the video above. Related Video This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Lamborghini says it could build the Sterrato rally car at a profit

Automobile spent an hour working out the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato concept at the Volkswagen Group's Nardo test track. Naturally, the question of a production version came up. Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini's chief technical officer, told the magazine a customer version would be possible, only because "the provisional business case suggests that we can build this car at a profit." And the secret to making money on the car would be 3D printing. The composition of the Sterrato is 96 percent bone-stock Huracan EVO. Same naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10 with 631 horsepower and 442 pound-feet of torque, same all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and torque vectoring, same 20-inch wheels. The exterior departures come in the handling software retuned for dirt and loose surfaces, a 1.85-inch lift, fender flares and a one-inch wider track, off-road tires backed by mud guards, aluminum plates front and rear. and those auxiliary LED lights. The cabin gets a titanium roll cage and five-point racing harnesses. Perhaps save for the software, the edits are cosmetic add-ons, and Reggiani said Lamborghini can fabricate "all restyled or new body panels, claddings, ducts, and splitters on 3D printers." The carmaker developed a kind of plastic especially for the cause, "a lightweight synthetic material which is in its final shape bolted or screwed onto the finished body." The Automobile piece said Lamborghini would need to assess the material's durability, and perhaps sort out a different solution for the "armadillo rear-window cover that messes up what view there is." There would also be the "jackhammer noise level" to attend to. Otherwise, the mag's assessment is that the Sterrato is "even more playful than its brethren, and the mere prospect of enjoying a long cold winter in a hard-core sports car is bound to make quite a few Lambophiles reach for their checkbooks." The case for the car is presented as the Sterrato forming one in a line of special edition Huracans that will maintain interest in the model until the replacement arrives in 2023 or 2024. Next year we'd get the hardcore Huracan STO, or Super Trofeo Omologato. A potential Sterrato could show in 2021, limited to between 500 and 1,000 units, sold for about $271,000 each. That's about $9,000 more than the 2020 Huracan EVO AWD coupe. A Huracan hybrid would be follow in 2022, a Huracan Superveloce providing the model's backstop before the successor.