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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.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4 Avio is ready for takeoff

The 760-horsepower Lamborghini Centenario understandably gets most of the attention at the Italian supercar maker's Geneva Motor Show booth this year, but the company has the limited edition Huracan LP 610-4 Avio on display there, too. This coupe doesn't have the Centenario's vast array of exclusive parts or any mechanical upgrades at all. Instead, the aviation-inspired model's buyers get special colors and additional standard equipment. You can easily spot the Avio edition from the outside from its white or gray flourishes on the lower portion of the mirrors, side sills, the front spoiler's lip, and a double stripe down the roof and hood. Customers can also order five new colors: pearlescent finish Grigio Falco and matte shades of Blu Grifo, Grigio Nibbio, Grigio Vulcano and Verde Turbine. The final exterior tweak is a small L63 emblem on the doors, which stands for Lamborghini and the company's founding in 1963. Inside, customers find a combination of black leather and hexagonal-pattern Alcantara upholstery with white stitching. Lambo also puts the L63 emblem on the seats, and there's a hand-enameled plate on the driver's side window. In addition to the upgraded surfaces, the Avio comes standard with a lifting system, cruise control, and GPS, which should probably come every version of the supercar. Lambo will limit the Avio to 250 units, and they'll start arriving at dealers in Europe this summer. Related Video: LAMBORGHINI INTRODUCES A HURACAN SPECIAL EDITION AT THE GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: THE HURACAN LP 610-4 AVIO Sant'Agata Bolognese/Geneva, 2 March 2016 – Alongside the Lamborghini Centenario, the Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4 Avio will make its debut at this year's Geneva Motor Show. Produced in a run of only 250, this special edition's name, colors and materials pay tribute to the world of aviation and aeronautics. From the outset, Lamborghini has been inspired by powerful fighter jets, from which it has borrowed technological, aerodynamic, ergonomic and stylistic solutions. References to the aeronautical world in Lamborghini's current product line include digital instrument clusters; controls located on the center console as in airplane cockpits; the red engine 'start' button; the tight stylistic language of exterior lines; and a broad range of matt exterior finishes. The new Huracan Avio offers a host of premium functional features in its standard configuration including lifting system, cruise control and GPS*.