Lamborghini is in the fast lane to becoming part of a digital manufacturing revolution after announcing that it has partnered with another business to make components for its vehicles.
Pursuant to the arrangement, the Italian manufacturer of luxury sports cars and sports utility vehicles has teamed up with Carbon, a digital manufacturing platform in Silicon Valley. The company is focused on reinventing how polymer products are designed, engineered, manufactured, and delivered, to produce auto parts at scale. Lamborghini’s first production parts using Carbon’s technology include a new textured fuel cap with the Urus label and a clip component for an air duct. These parts are used for its Urus model Super SUV, which was rolled out in 2018.
By merging software, hardware and material science, Carbon is laying the groundwork for what it calls a digital manufacturing revolution. Its Carbon Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) technology, in fact, uses light and oxygen to create products from a pool of resin. It accomplishes this feat by merging over-the-air software updates with connected, data-centric hardware and innovative materials to help both designers and engineers to create products, economically and at mass scale, that were previously all but impossible to manufacture.
“Through our extensive procurement research, we found that many of our vehicle components were ideal candidates for digital manufacturing,” said Stefan Gramse, chief procurement officer of Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., in a statement. “By partnering with Carbon, we are designing on the means of production, which allows us to produce more durable products smarter, faster, and more efficiently, while also substantially accelerating our time to market.”
Leveraging Carbon printers and DLS technology, Lamborghini, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, is working closely with its parent company’s electronic research lab to redesign many aspects of its vehicle interior, mirror assembly and accessory components to manufacture quality, light-weight, end-use parts.
This is certainly not Lamborghini’s first partnership. Check out what the company had been up to in previous years.