Lamborghini emits some V12-powered nonsense

Carbon emissions from Italian sports cars are so great that even a 35% C02 reduction still leaves them bottom of the class

Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 10.13 BST

A green Lamborghini. It doesn't sound likely, does it? I can't quite imagine a car with a V12 engine and maximum speed of 350kph having an emissions bypass.
But last week, the Italian sports car maker announced plans to cut 35% from the carbon dioxide emissions of its cars by 2015. And meanwhile it is putting 17,000 square meters of solar panels on the roof of its main factory at Sant'Agata Bolognese near Bologna, and introducing other measures such as better insulation to cut factory emissions by 30%.
Stephan Winkelmann, the president and chief executive of Lamborghini, said: "We have an objective to reduce CO2 emissions to the greatest possible degree." The goal is to make the company's cars "more considerate of the environment, in terms of emissions and the use of resources".
The announcement harvested some handy headlines. Not least in the Daily Telegraph in Britain, which announced that "Lamborghini's green pledge" would commit the "Italian supercar maker" to a "low-CO2 future". The company said its investment shows its "sense of social responsibility regarding the environment".
Well, hold your horsepower. The big question is: how bad are the emissions now? Just what is being reduced by 35%?
Check the European Union's list of emissions from all cars sold in the UK and it turns out that, of more than 4,800 models on sale, Lamborghini's models cluster right at the bottom, with the worst emissions, and various versions of its Murcielago occupy the bottom four places. In the standard EU test drive, they emit 495g of CO2 for every kilometre driven.
That's more than three times the emissions from a typical saloon and five times that from the lowest carbon petrol cars.
The Murcielago easily beats off gas-guzzling challengers like Ferraris, Aston Martins, Bentleys and even Hummers. In fact it's in a class of its own. The next worst, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, makes do with emitting 470g.
It is so bad that even if the "supercars" designers cut its emissions by 35% tomorrow, the filthy four would still be among the 2.5% most-polluting models on the market. "More considerate of the environment"? Well not much.
Still, Lamborghini's greenwash is a turn-round of sorts. This time last year, Winkelmann dismissed out of hand EU calls for him to make emissions cuts. He claimed he made so few cars that it didn't make any real difference to the climate what they emitted. Now, however, Winkelmann insists that his company is "committed to its policy of environmental management".
And don't forget that the 495g rating only applies to emissions from the European Union's standard test, which is designed to mimic regular day-to-day motoring by regular day-to-day vehicles. Any vehicle with 6,500cc of engine capacity is unlikely to be driven like a shoppers' hatchback. So we can be fairly sure the actual emissions of a Murcielago roaring through the French riviera or hurtling up the autobahn will be even higher than suggested in the EU charts.
I guess nobody expects the Lamborghini to be like others cars – nor that their owners will treat them like regular vehicles. Batman drove the top-polluting Murcielago 640 in the movie The Dark Knight. And last summer an owner in Qatar reportedly air-freighted his Lamborghini to London for a service. But these people do share the same planet as the rest of us, even if they'd probably rather they didn't.
Trying to put a green halo on this ultimate gas guzzler is like giving Jack the Ripper a medal for taking a night off.
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