It says that the car is not built entirely from LEGO parts: there is a steel frame, axles, and many other non-LEGO things in it.

[1] https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-parts/technic [2] http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pd...

The team said they did create new parts, which might seem like cheating, but later they say they were "existing shapes in new colors". To be more precise, they needed semi-transparent version of some parts for the light system, and it's unsurprising that they needed to make them because semi-transparent lego parts are quite rare (since they are used for specific details in lego sets, not for bulk construction). I'm pretty forgiving on such a small sidestep from full purism given the scale and the result of the project.

Building anything strong out of Lego is an interesting challenge. I built a speaker stand that's basically a suspension bridge (using fishing line). A piece of wood would have done the job better.

So, it's look like correct title for this news should be:

LEGO built a life-size, drivable Bugatti that consist on less than 95% from over a million Technic pieces[0]

[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/august/tec...

Some facts:

    Over 1,000,000 LEGO Technic elements in total 
    339 types of LEGO Technic elements used 
    No glue used in the assembly 
    Total weight: 1,500 kg 
    Engine contains:
    2,304 LEGO Power Functions motors
    4,032 LEGO Technic gear wheels 
    2,016 LEGO Technic cross axles 
    Theoretical performance of 5.3 HP 
    Estimated torque of 92 Nm
    Functional rear spoiler (using both LEGO Power Functions and pneumatics) 
    Functional speedometer built entirely from LEGO Technic elements 
    13,438 man hours used on development and construction

Though no build detail shots.

"56 custom made Technic element types (existing shapes in new colors)"

from https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/themes/technic/...

[1] https://shop.lego.com/en-ES/Bugatti-Chiron-42083 [2] https://ali1994.brickowl.com/store/lego-technic-cross-block-...

--"I work for Lego, we're building a life size Bugatti you can actually drive!"

"...are you free later?"

If we move to America, it would only cost ~100k at minimum wage.

(I'll get my coat.)

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/2018-bugatti-chiron-review/

As a note, I have driven a car at its top speed once. I had a mid 90s Geo Metro with the I3 engine in a 70MPH zone and it had a top speed of about 72 on level ground.

I've probably run every vehicle I've ever owned until it topped out (or as close as practical). And I've owned some fast ones. I still think it's a mostly useless metric. Even in Nevada with 20 miles of visibility and empty road in front of you, there's a limit to what you can do on a public road without the odds rapidly stacking against you with each added mph. And the vast majority of tracks don't have a straight long enough to get to 260mph. So lot of damned good that 2.9MM car does you on I-405 at 5:00...or on a track day.

0-60, OTOH...

Looking at the most accident-prone cars, all the ones I recognize are sports cars: https://www.cars.com/articles/whats-the-most-crash-prone-car...

Ever driven a Metro at 70mph? I'll take the Bugatti at 200mph, thanks.

any car with a top speed of 261 mph (420 kph) seems inordinately likely to end up in an air-conditioned garage and never driven at all.

(That's typically what happens to many of these 'hyper-cars' - they are treated as long term investments rather than vehicles, heaven forbid you affect the future resale value by actually driving it...).

Often luxury car companies will refuse to build any more because each additional car built reduces the value of all existing cars.

So the answer is 0. This marketing doesn't need to sell any cars to justify the cost.

Also, I think this is about Lego, not Bugatti (but I’m not excluding the possibility that it’s mutually beneficial).

“On [the Chiron] project, we get back in the black,” Bugatti’s Head of Production Christophe Piochon told me. The development of the Veyron’s complex systems over its lifetime, which laid the solid engineering foundation for the Chiron, resulted in $1.62 billion in investment costs. “By the end of the Chiron’s run, we’ll be profitable,” Piochon promised.

The Veyron somewhat infamously was a net loss for Volkswagen, despite its massive price. But ultimately its role was to be a halo car for the entire Volkswagen Group, and as such profit on the car itself wasn't such a concern.

If we wanted a real comparison, we'd need to add the cost of R&D to the production costs. We could divide the R&D for the Chiron by the number of units produced. I'm sure the schematics for the lego version were much less expensive to develop, but that would be offset by there being only a single unit. Furthermore, how do we price in the marginal utility of having already developed the original?

https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/

:-)

https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Technic-Power-Functions-Motor/dp...

If you scroll to the bottom of the page there's a few links to "raw video clips" and "how we did it". I'm downloading them now but the names of the files sound like they're exactly what you want.

I highly recommend it.

Of course there's a whole other wing to their factories for sorting pieces into sets, they release hundreds of different sets a year which design teams spend months prototyping, they spend huge on marketing, community outreach, and licensing fees, and a non-trivial portion of their manufacturing capacity goes to Legoland resorts and projects like this Bugatti Chiron build. Nonetheless, the Lego group commands Apple-like profit margins.

Still, for the consumer the value proposition on a Lego purchase is very good, because it's value doesn't depreciate over time. In fact, vintage Lego sets have appreciated on average 10% per year over the last decade. Buying Lego is money in the bank, presuming you keep your Lego inventoried and save the boxes, stickers and instructions.

  No glue
  Powered by lego electric motors

I've built a number of robots out of Lego Technic pieces and the only way to keep them together was often to glue pieces together. There was a MIT interstitial class (6.270) that was pretty influential in the hobby robots scene during the late 80s and one of the fallouts of that was a great building techniques guide that was notes on how to make things like power plants and load supporting beams.

That said, supporting the weight of a person and a car in the air across the distance between the front and read axles would have seemed pretty impossible to me. Now if you looked underneath and there was a row of wheels keeping the middle of the car supported that would not have surprised me. And then a top speed of 20km/h ? That is almost 20' or 6m/second, that is fast for even a small Lego car much less a huge one.

Yeah, there is a core steel chassis for that. The main LEGO stuff is the body and engine.

However, the kind of weight that 1,000,000 Legos is (in this case, north of 3,300 pounds) means that they had to use pieces, none of which (I believe) exceed 8" in length, to form the support structure of this vehicle. I would _love_ to see the "chassis" of this thing. Probably some gigantic rail structures holding it all together.

http://legoexternal.23video.com/v.ihtml/player.html?token=96...

https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med...

The patterns of the bodywork are ingenious and quite pretty as well.

So can a jet ski depending on where you live, but it's still very much a toy.

Joking aside, isn't it weird for LEGO to associate itself with a gaz-guzzler while simultaneously trying to distance itself from fossil fuel-based materials? Does anyone know if there's a commercial deal behind this project?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/energy-environme...

> There was an extra electric screwdriver build to adjust the cylinder pistons. It is made completely out of LEGO Technic pieces. It was needed because an actual screwdriver has too much torque. The LEGO one uses Power Functions motor, simple gearbox and custom-designed switch.

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-speedometer-works.html

It wasn't that long ago that all speedos were mechanical.

[1] https://youtu.be/GaQB_tgS7f0

So in other words, it costs more to build this model in parts (not including 13,000 hours of labor) to build than the original hypercar its replicating?

Not saying this isn’t super cool, but something to keep in mind for perspective!

Update:

Not comparing retail prices, as obviously the LEGO version isn’t for sale, talking about cost of building (not including R&D).

https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/august/tec...

i hope they do a crash test with it when they finish showing it off at various events :)

Good thing it's probably not very fast. Or road legal. Still neat though.

I think they did their risk assessment.

Clearly, somewhere down the line I picked the wrong career.

Very gracious of you to conclude a trivial nitpick this way.