Hidden in the small Italian town of Sant’Agata Bolognese is one of the biggest experiments of the Volkswagen Group. It’s not a new hybrid supercar, although several of those are on the road. It’s the quieter, less sexy parts of the Lamborghini brand that are the driving force behind one of the world’s most enduring car brands.
Sustainability takes many forms. It’s not just zero tailpipe emissions, though that’s the loudest talking point right now. The real impact of sustainable business practices comes from product development through manufacturing and through the end of the product life cycle.
Lamborghini concentrates the hardest on the two elements they can directly control: development and production.
Walking around the Lamborghini plant, which was certified CO2 neutral in 2015, it’s like most other car assembly facilities. It is clean, neat, and full of right angles and long corridors. There is nothing unusual about it to the naked eye.
Automobili Lamborghini SpA
However, if you stand at the exit of the Urus paint shop and look to your left, past the stalls that put mules of possible future vehicles that cannot be written about now, you will see one of the biggest points in the pride of keeping the company: a big. , green field next to another and another after that.
Underneath the chain of fields runs a pipeline supplying biomethane gas that will power 50 percent of Lamborghini’s manufacturing operations by 2023, replacing natural gas.
At the other end of the pipeline are two trigeneration plants that produce electricity, heating and cooling through a closed system that delivers nearly 4 million cubic meters of gas. Its use of biomethane reduces the company’s carbon footprint by up to 80 percent – 11,400 tons per year.
The company switched to transporting the Urus’ body shells by rail, resulting in an 85 percent reduction in emissions in the process.
Changes aimed at maintaining operations within the complex have already taken effect. Ninety-five percent of the paint used within the company’s paint shop is water-based. The solar panels provide shade and cover for the parking areas. The cars are manufactured in Class A sustainable buildings, defined as having low energy consumption and maintenance costs.
Automobili Lamborghini SpA
Leather and cabin fiber are upcycled and reused as part of new initiatives. The rest of the leather is sent to a local company that employs workers from poor conditions. Those workers make the skins sold in Lamborghini stores around the world such as wallets and keychains.
The circularity of the use of carbon fiber is the goal of Lamborghini. It has a long way to get there, but the company is making strides, making promotional products from recycled carbon fiber, such as bracelets. Twenty-seven tons of composite materials from Aventadors were recycled from 2020 to 2021.
Lamborghini doesn’t take the line on sustainable plant operations. They devoted time and resources to other biological projects just down the road from the complex.
Lamborghini Park is home to one of the company’s sustainability initiatives. There, more than 10,000 oak trees stand in ecological harmony with many species of plants and animals, whose growth is tracked by local university scientists to see which types of plots prove most effective. beneficial to the environment.
Automobili Lamborghini SpA
It is also home to a bio-monitoring project with 13 hives filled with 600,000 bees, the fruits of which are data as well as honey that is highly sought after by the company’s employees and limited number of friends. The apiary was established in 2016.
Hives are high tech. It contains an instrument to measure internal and external temperature, humidity and wind speed, as well as electronic scales that weigh each hive to remotely monitor whether the bees are collecting enough nectar and pollen to grow according to expectations. .
These ecological projects are included in the company’s “Direzione Cor Tauri” plan, driven by the largest investment in Lamborghini’s history, €1.5 billion over four years.
The full rage of the luxury automaker will be a hybrid in 2024 and a fully electric model is scheduled to be released in 2030.
Automobili Lamborghini SpA
Lamborghini uses a holistic approach to sustainability, not a fad or fad. They don’t flaunt their modest efforts to electrify vehicles or office recycling efforts and call it a day. The company continues to push the boundaries with sustainability and the vehicles they offer up to their consumers.
