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LEGO built a life-size, drivable Bugatti from over a million Technic pieces
- cududa 8y agoWhat blows my mind is aside from the frame, wheels and batteries the whole thing is LEGO
- ashleyn 8y agoLook at the patterns in the body. A seasoned engineer can certainly make do with what he's got.
- PeterisP 8y agoNot even the frame - "This is also the first-time load-bearing parts were built purely out of LEGO."
- nonsince 8y agoThat doesn’t mean that all load-bearing parts are lego. It has a steel frame, as the article states.
- joering2 8y agoExactly. No matter what your engineering skills are, the thickest Lego bricks cannot withstand a grownup man sitting on them.
- jakemoshenko 8y agoI regularly sit on creations out of my daughter's duplo.
- joering2 8y agoPut wheels on it and drive it 18mph we see then.
- icebraining 8y agoThe base of the Super Awesome Micro Project (a LEGO hotrod built a few years ago, who could travel at 20mph) was pure LEGO; only the four struts connected to the wheels weren't.
- thedrbrian 8y agoWas always curious about that. Got any pictures of the build?
- icebraining 8y agoNo, sorry.
- laurentb 8y agohere's a vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObE4_nMCjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObE4_nMCjE
- jacquesm 8y agoI've built usable furniture out of Lego, including chairs and I could sit on it just fine. It's incredibly strong if you use it wisely.
- 24gttghh 8y agoI saw a metal frame being used to assemble the car in one of the videos but I didn't see them remove it after putting the body together.
- drcongo 8y agoLink to the story without all the Oath tracking: https://www.slashgear.com/life-size-lego-technic-bugatti-chiron-actually-drives-30543860/ https://www.slashgear.com/life-size-lego-technic-bugatti-chi...
- crispyambulance 8y agoAside from shape, the LEGO one or the "real" one share other thing: they're still both toys!
- sandworm101 8y agoIt is only a toy if it has no purpose beyond being a toy (see "art"). The bugatti can get me to work and back.
- cirgue 8y ago> The bugatti can get me to work and back. So can a jet ski depending on where you live, but it's still very much a toy.
- jethro_tell 8y agoNot if you live on an island. The same as snow machines are actual commuter mobiles in places in Alaska.
- bognition 8y agoWow, this is just incredible. Was anyone else hoping there would be a head on collision crash test between the two cars?
- lihaciudaniel 8y agoI think from that many man hours of work it would be in a museum. Maybe even anti earthquake feature so it doesn't completely break.
- zaarn 8y agoYou'd probably be torn to shreds in the lego one by the flying pieces and/or die when you try to leave the car and step on the million pieces lying around.
- em-bee 8y agowell, i was certain they wouldn't do that, but yes, i want to see how this car behaves in a real crash test.
- Radle 8y agoFor me, this is even more impressive than a real Bugatti.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kaffeemitsahne 8y agoThere's some nice close-ups in the images.zip downloadable from here: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med... The patterns of the bodywork are ingenious and quite pretty as well.
- Scarblac 8y agoI wonder about the size of the step-by-step instruction booklet.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoNot to mention the size of the box it came in !
- tda 8y agomore details here: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med... (including a 714mb zip with images which I am still downloading) 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 Edit: images are meh, just press shots. Was hoping for more on how it was built
- tda 8y ago"...using 58 types of Technic custom-made elements", anyone have a information on what those pieces are? They really spent an incedible amount of hours and effort on this. 13k+ man hours...
- 5874-4b22-a4e0 8y agoTheoretically this could cost as much as 1.3k @ 10 cents per hour in a third world country to build, but there is a risk of theft when a piece of lego is worth more on the black market than what people make per hour. If we move to America, it would only cost ~100k at minimum wage.
- nkrisc 8y agoHonestly the original source is probably better than the techcrunch link. No ads, more writeup. https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/august/technic-bugatti-chiron-build-for-real/ https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2018/august/tec...
- sacheendra 8y agoBut with no option to opt-out of ad tracking. :-(
- ahoka 8y agoAnd no forced consent dialog to instantly close. Thanks!
- ec109685 8y agoLego’s writeup neglects to mention the metal frame that serves as the structure for the build.
- nogbit 8y agoof which requires flash to view the embedded video, shame they can't embed like TechCrunch did.
- cpburns2009 8y agoThat page doesn't require flash to play the video. It's a JavaScript video player using a <video> tag.
- nogbit 8y agothat's what was sent to or rendered by your browser anyway
- wpietri 8y agoThat writeup mentions it has a "detachable steering wheel and brake pedal", which is surely going to give me nightmares where the Lego steering wheel pops off in my hand and the accelerator pedal sticks to the floor.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhich is more expensive?
- LeonM 8y agoGood question. A Bugatti Chiron MSRP is about 2.5MM, the lego version could be more expensive, if you add all the bricks, the steel frame, the (real) Chiron wheels (40k for the set, I estimate) and the 13,500 (!) hours of work it could get really expensive, really fast.
- mkj 8y agoI wonder how the "Functional speedometer built entirely from LEGOTECHNIC elements" works. Do technic pieces have springs/magnets, or they're using elasticity of the plastic pieces somehow...
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoProbably magnets. https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-speedometer-works.html https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-speedometer-works.html It wasn't that long ago that all speedos were mechanical.
- dsr_ 8y agoIt could also be optical (various LEGO computers have optical sensors and timers).
- amarant 8y agohonestly, from these pictures at least, the lego version is more beautiful than the original! i hope they do a crash test with it when they finish showing it off at various events :)
- jandrese 8y agoI like how it has a detachable steering wheel just like a real race car. I was wondering if the driver had to just press it onto the studs to install it.
- village-idiot 8y agoThat's actually kind of dangerous to drive, even a very slow speed impact would absolutely shatter and leave the driver not only exposed to the other car/barrier, but also the ground and everything else. People ejected from cars via windows/sunroofs tend to fare very poorly, and the same is true if your car stops being a car all around you. Good thing it's probably not very fast. Or road legal. Still neat though.
- baq 8y agothe article quotes 20 km/h.
- village-idiot 8y agoHence the “good thing”.
- snowwolf 8y ago20km/h top speed, driven by an "Official Bugatti Pilot" wearing a crash helmet on a closed circuit. I think they did their risk assessment.
- village-idiot 8y agoYeah, that’s how I’d drive it too.
- airstrike 8y ago> Official Bugatti Pilot Clearly, somewhere down the line I picked the wrong career.
- huhtenberg 8y ago> Still neat though. Very gracious of you to conclude a trivial nitpick this way.
- village-idiot 8y agoI’m sorry I didn’t gush over it like you wanted me to. I’ll try better next time.
- amelius 8y agoI want to see what's under the hood!
- amelius 8y agoA crash-test video would be nice :)
- mikkelam 8y agoFor some reason the video widgets are unclickable for me on firefox, so here's the direct link to the video for anyone else who might've had the problem http://legoexternal.23video.com/v.ihtml/player.html?token=96120d3e2bf694f3e8f56a1dfba622f2&showDescriptions=0&source=share&photo%5fid=35403689&autoPlay=1 http://legoexternal.23video.com/v.ihtml/player.html?token=96...
- lodi 8y agoAnd the best part is it's modular, so you can reconfigure it into a minivan for your daily commute!
- ChuckMcM 8y agoFascinating stuff and a pretty amazing accomplishment! Good job Lego. 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.
- edraferi 8y ago> 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 Yeah, there is a core steel chassis for that. The main LEGO stuff is the body and engine.
- miohtama 8y agoYou can find the chassis and other necessary metal parts (wheels) on this how we did it video https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med...
- felipemnoa 8y agoLooking at the car it reminds me of the replicators in Stargate SG-1.
- kozak 8y agoThere is a PDF "fact sheet" explanation here: https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/themes/technic/2hy2018/apollo/downloads/fact-sheet.pdf https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/themes/technic/... 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.
- skybrian 8y agoWell, of course. 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.
- nathancahill 8y agoIntersting! Got any pics?
- kazinator 8y agoAlso, "LEGO Technic" is an ill-defined term. The various kits contain an repertoire of custom pupose-designed pieces whose category appears to be open-ended. It seems that almost any conceivable chunk of plastic whatsoever (or perhaps another material) could be included a "LEGO Technic" kit. Thus if something is built out of "LEGO Technic", what exactly does that mean? It needs to be qualified, like built only with the pieces available in a particular kit available to consumers (as many instances of that kit as required).
- dclowd9901 8y agoIf you're not a person who's spent much time with legos, it might be hard to grasp why this is considered an "engineering feat". LEGO is a system of modular building after all, right? 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.
- jonknee 8y agoThere is a non Lego support structure (I mean it makes sense, it has real Chiron wheels/tires!). Still quite impressive though.
- homonculus1 8y agoIt should be noted, however, that The LEGO Group is the world's largest tire manufacturer by volume.
- bgutierrez 8y agohttps://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/media https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med... has a link to a "How We Did It" video. There are clips of the chassis and some of the parts that weren't Lego. It shouldn't detract from the feat; the motor is a matrix of Technic motors, the door hinges are Technic pieces, and the skin was adjustable with a tool that also was made of Technic parts.
- dclowd9901 8y agoBummer. It’s honestly a bit disappointing because when it comes to Lego large structures, the support structure tends to be the most impressive part (if done in all Lego).
- ovrdrv3 8y agoI WOKE UP IN A NEW ... Bugatti?
- SonicSoul 8y agoUnfortunately it costs 10x the price of the Bugatti if you add up the pieces
- Finnucane 8y agoOne assumes they didn't pay retail.
- ourmandave 8y agoIf this thing is ever in an accident I hope first responders are wearing thick soled shoes.
- chx 8y agoI am sure you've read before if all modern tools and factories were to disappear we would need to rebuild almost from scratch because you need more precise tools to build even more precise ones. In that vein: > 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.
- escoundel 8y agoI hope they capitalize on it more and produce a few videos with build walkthroughs and engineering behind it. For all its "markety" feel, there's a lot to learn and engage folks interested in building with first principles in mind.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Animats 8y ago2,304 little tiny motors!
- andromaton 8y agoUnfortunately, the Lego pieces cost more than the original car.
- bytesmith 8y agoIt’s not quite as fast but in my opinion the Ferdinand GT3[1] is a much cooler vehicle. [1] https://youtu.be/GaQB_tgS7f0 https://youtu.be/GaQB_tgS7f0
- mey 8y agoThere are two things that really amaze me No glue Powered by lego electric motors I can accept that there is important subframe and wheels not in Lego. It's still masterful and essentially a work of art.
- unwabuisi 8y agoQuite an amazing feat, but an even more amazing marketing campaign.
- iamleppert 8y agoElon Musk should take note
- jsjohnst 8y ago> developed using over 1,000,000 LEGO Technic elements and powered exclusively using motors from the LEGO Power Function platform. Packed with 2,304 motors and 4,032 LEGO Technic gear wheels 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).
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y agoIs that the first Bugatti EV? 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-environment/lego-plastic-denmark-environment-toys.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/energy-environme...