Lamborghini slashes emissions using trains

Tuesday, 15 June 2021

Lamborghini is cutting the CO2 from its transportation by 85 per cent by switching to rail.

When it comes to reducing the fuel consumption and emissions of their cars, supercar manufacturers walk a delicate line between doing what the world expects and maintaining the explosive performance, sound and character its customers expect.

But there are things they can do to drastically reduce their overall carbon footprint, such as the latest initiative by Lamborghini.

The company has announced a deal with leading European rail freight transportation company ÖBB Rail Cargo to deliver the body shells of its top-selling Urus SUV from the Volkswagen facility in Zwickau, Germany, where they are built, to Lamborghini headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese where the final car is assembled, via a sustainable route.

The Urus is assembled in Italy, but its body comes from Germany and its engine comes from Hungary.

Lamborghini says road transportation is being entirely replaced by rail and the shift will reduce CO2 emissions by a massive 85 per cent, going from 2,234 tons to 331, saving some 1,903 tons of carbon dioxide annually. The only transport by road will take place on trucks powered by liquefied natural gas from Modena to the Sant’Agata Bolognese site, accounting for around 21km out of the total 1,000km journey.

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Lamborghini says the switch to rail transport will slash 85 per cent of its transport emissions.

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Just 21km of the 1000km trip will now use road transport, and that will be in liquefied natural gas-powered trucks.

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“Our decarbonisation program continues and is being translated into tangible actions,” said Stephan Winkelmann, president and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini.

“Following the announcement of the Direzione Cor Tauri program (the company’s path towards electrification and sustainability), we are now unveiling a further component of our integrated plan, through which we want to bring practical solutions to today’s environmental challenges, taking action to develop our products and our Sant’Agata Bolognese site. The implementation of a sustainable logistics chain is an important step on this journey.”

With an investment of more than €1.5 billion over the next four years, the Direzione Cor Tauri program will lead to the decarbonisation of future Lamborghini models and of the Sant’Agata Bolognese site, with a target to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 per cent across the entire range by 2025.

While the reduction in emissions is admirable, it does leave one glaring question – why is the body built in a VW factory and shipped to Italy when the entire Urus is actually built from essentially ‘off the shelf’ VW Group components?

The Urus sits on the same MLB Evo platform as the Volkswagen Touareg, Bentley Bentayga, Porsche Cayenne and Audi Q7 and e-tron and is powered by a “reworked” version Audi’s 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8, which is actually built at a Volkswagen plant in Hungary and is shipped to Lamborghini's assembly plant.

There are all sorts of logistical reasons for this, and it is not uncommon in the industry, but we imagine it would save a lot more carbon if the whole car rolled down the same assembly line as some of its relatives. But it wouldn’t be ‘properly’ Italian then, would it?