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Comment by tda | Hacker News Reader

more details here: 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

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https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/technic/bugatti-chiron/med... has more, including an archive of 35 images some of which are detail shots of the wheels & steering wheels.

Though no build detail shots.

Videos on this page do include some build shots. The 8 minute video is especially well done.

"...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...

Theoretically 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.

Are you allowed to use child labor if it is to build a lego car?

So long as it is Lego and not Stickle Bricks, yes. This is the law at my sister's house where the dad builds cars out of Lego.

I think you mean the block market!

(I'll get my coat.)

Crazy budget, just at $20 dollars an hour that is $~260k. Hope it paid off!

How many Bugatti's does this piece of marketing have to sell to justify the cost? I'm guessing not many.

I'm pretty sure every Veyron/Chiron built is already sold before construction begins. They only make a tiny number of them and collectors snap them right up.

Probably both one and infinite. Hypercars usually run on +100% margins in an attempt to cover their absurd R&D, and this is the halo model of the hypercar, which usually run at even higher margins, so a +$300k gross off each model sold will not be unusual. Even then these types of cars never make back their investment costs, as they serve more as advertisements of their parent company more so than actual products.

With regards to Bugatti:

“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.

Like the other poster says - this doesn't really sell any cars because they are spoken for as soon as the plans to build one are revealed (ie Bugatti often sells through their entire planned-to-build cars years or even decades before the car is actually built)

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.

That’s a too simplistic approach. Bugatti wants to be able to sell cars at the price point in the future and any marketing and PR they do certainly has to be geared towards that, not selling additonal cars.

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

AFAIK, the Chiron production run is only about 60% sold last I heard.

It's the Divo that is sold out but that's an even more limited run.

The real question is how many Lego versions of the car does this have to sell to pay off.

Even at that price, it'd be a deal; the real car costs $2,998,000. [1] And I expect the Lego version would be be safer, too; any car with a top speed of 261 mph (420 kph) seems inordinately likely to end up wrapped around a freeway lamppost.

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

I think the top speed of a car is a very weak factor in its likelyhood of being wrapped around a lamppost, as I suspect most people in the US have never driven their car at its top speed.

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 assume that it's not only top speed, but high speed as well. Must be tough to control something at 200mph, but not as much at 70mph

Even at just 200 km/h (~125 mph) you begin to perceive the road narrowing. It's weird.

Must be tough to control something at 200mph, but not as much at 70mph

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

Having driven a Smart car flat out at 96mph (as clocked by a police officer, thankfully got a warning and not a ticket) and having done over 200mph (not in a Bugatti, but in a comparably priced car) on a track, I agree, definitely will take the later for safety.

Not that a single anecdote refuits your point, but my favorite story about the Dodge hell back when it first came out was that the first one that was sold in Texas did end up wrapped around a pole something like 2 minutes after it was driven off the lot.

as I suspect most people in the US have never driven their car at its top speed.

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...

Maybe. My guess is that a car whose speedometer goes up to 300 MPH (and has all sorts of features to make high-speed driving great) is in the category of "attractive nuisance". It's like telling a kid not to stuff beans up their nose.

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...

> any car with a top speed of 261 mph (420 kph) seems inordinately likely to end up wrapped around a freeway lamppost.

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...).

Plus over 1 000 000 lego technic elements at what I figure an average of ~$0.30 = over ~$300k. So total cost of the car is likely closer to $600k.

I think your average is likely very low. Many of the parts are expensive and offset the ones under $0.30 by a large margin.

so the question is, how close to the cost of the real car is it? it certainly is not cheap but I have no means to estimate the costs of LEGOs or custom pieces

in US $, a Bugatti Chiron without extras starts at about $3 million.

3 million is the retail price, not the cost of parts and labor to construct it, which is all these lego-version cost numbers are considering. We can't compare retail prices because the lego version isn't being sold, and if it were auctioned as art, I bet it would go for more than 3 million.

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?

13438 comes out to about 11 people working on this for 6 months. That's a huge commitment.

The press they'd get from this is worth the investment I guess.

"So what do you do?"

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

"...are you free later?"

> "...using 58 types of Technic custom-made elements", anyone have a information on what those pieces are?

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

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

According the the pdf factsheet linked in this thread they were just existing pieces in new colors. So the transparent parts for the lights and I imagine LEGO doesn't sell technic in Bugatti Blue.

They sell the smaller version of this car, in the same colors [1]. But many pieces are not available in those colors, e.g. I see a lot of the 3x1 cross-blocks [2] in light azure, which is not in any other set.

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

Where does one get these Technic pieces? There seem to be a bunch of pre-made sets but I don't see a generic kit with some motors and most often used bits.

wow its a big url...not trying to advert sell or endorse, but you asked where do i get, so heres one place...

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

Buy them from @jacquesm:

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

:-)

> images are meh, just press shots. Was hoping for more on how it was built

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 can't understand how this was done without glue. Sure they must have used something to secure the initial blocks to the steel frame, but nothing afterwards?

various orthogonal locking schemes ?

The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide, by Pwel Kmiec, from NoStarch Press, is an excellent reference on mechanical stress and parts techniques, as well as guides for suspensions, gearboxes, transmissions, steering, and so on and so forth.

I highly recommend it.

I used to know a pdf about the arithmetic beauty of lego ratios. I cannot find it anymore ..

stock LEGO in sets is around 10 cents per piece. technics are more expensive. Looking at Ebay, it looks like 30-50 cents on average. You are looking at $200K to $400K for the 1M Technics pieces. They said the motors cost $70K. Say up to $500K for LEGO including custom elements.

Relative to the retail price, the manufacturing cost of Lego elements are pennies on the dollar. For a $50 starwars set there might be 50 cents worth of plastic. The metal injection moulding dies cost tens of thousands, but one die can mould 120 million basic 2x4 bricks over it's lifetime.

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.

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