A little over a year ago, I came across some very cool sketches while scrolling through the endless feed of posts on Instagram. The sketch style was rough, unique and appealing. The sketches formed a narrative that urged me to get into contact with their creator. That’s when I DM’ed Max Lask, aka @rghsktch.
Over the course of our conversation, I found out a lot about the guy on the other end of the screen, and his situation was intriguing. At the end of our chat, I asked if I could share some of his work on the Form Trends profile. What happened next was straight out of a fairy tale.
Max told me he was the last automotive design student on the Industrial Design course at HBK Braunschweig. As soon as he finished his studies the course would cease to exist. He also shared some interesting anecdotes about his personal life, and he showed me some photos of a design director taken back when he was much younger and had a lot more hair. We laughed, and I swore I’d never share those images – though their hilariousness is forever etched into my brain 🙂
The sketches Max created were done using BIC pens, polychrome markers and an iPad. I loved how raw they were. It was a sketch style that was unique and unadulterated. I published them on my profile and they were immediately lauded. Max wrote me a week later to say that many people from different companies had reached out to him because of the post, which pleased me tremendously.
Later, Max told me how the inimitable Achim Anscheidt, design director of Bugatti, had offered him an internship at the hypercar company’s design studio, first for six months and then for nine. He completed his internship over the summer and the Bugatti design studio sponsored his bachelor’s thesis: the Vision LeMans 2050 racing car. In the end, he was offered an exterior design position at Bugatti, which he began at the start of this month.
The premise of the Bugatti Vision LeMans 2050 project was to explore the potential benefits of a brand’s return to motorsport, and how electric powertrains will influence the future of motorsport. Max posed questions, conducted research and ultimately devised the exterior design of the vehicle and looked at a possible future scenario for electric racecars.
“My final thesis presents a possible future for Bugatti in the increasingly important field of e-mobility,” Max shares. “It was important to me to show how the brand can both profit from the increasing developments in racing and e-mobility and also tie in with its own history in racing.”
The Bugatti Vision LeMans is a radical design intended for the year 2050. It is lightweight and pure, a nod to the historic Bugatti Type 35 racecar.
“The Bugatti Vision Le Mans is the logical consequence and a direct descendant of the Bugatti racing era,” says Max. “It represents an extremely light, radical and efficient racing car, with which Bugatti continues the history of its racing successes and shows new paths for the brand.”
While motorsport is gradually evolving towards electrification, Max says the next step could be even more environmentally friendly and ‘green’, with zero emissions and less plastic/carbon used in the cars.
“In e-mobility, the development of current megatrends, technological developments and the ever-growing need for sustainable design are paramount,” Max notes. “Adding the history of the Bugatti company, a future scenario was created that provided the basis for my work in terms of its formal design.”
The shell of the race car concept is composed of lightweight materials such as graphene — which replaces carbon to further reduce weight. This was combined with a lightweight drivetrain that includes an ion engine, which features better thermal efficiencies, airflow/pressure and is devoid of moving parts. The body of the car also includes many aerodynamic enhancements, which adds downforce at speed.
As automakers grapple with the future of the personal vehicle and the automotive industry’s impact on the environment, ultra-luxury carmakers like Bugatti are constantly looking at ways to stay relevant in this changing landscape.
Unfortunately, internal constraints sometimes impede the level of exploration pursued in the Bugatti Vision LeMans, which could be a potential technology demonstrator to test new technologies. By sponsoring the thesis project, Anscheidt and the Bugatti team were able to create a proposal they may not have been able to develop themselves in-house.
Wishing you all the best in your career Max!
