“I founded Divergent about seven years ago as a generation progression company for virtual manufacturing. Divergent owns 70% of Czinger Vehicles, which is the product company, and Czinger 21C demonstrates what our virtual architecture can do,” said Kevin Czinger. founder and CEO of Divergent 3-d and Czinger Vehicles.
Kevin Czinger and his son Lukas have assembled a team of former Formula 1 and Le Mans race car engineers to paint with their divergent scientists and programmers. Zinger Vehicles’ 21C is the first “digital” car published in 3-d, an evidence of architectural theory, a brilliant commercial car for OEM contracts as a Tier 1 supplier.
With Divergent’s headquarters in the indescribable commercial district of Torrance, California, in the shadow of Highway 110 leading to the port of Long Beach, I would never expect a company willing to redefine functionality and luxury vehicles. the Old World, Maranello and Gmünd were insignificant peoples when Ferrari and Porsche were founded.
“A program like this is much more like a motorsport program,” says Ewan Baldry, Czinger’s lead engineer. “We’ve built a team that’s basically focused on motorsport with a dash of OEMs at the most sensitive of that, so we’re not just building a race car. The Divergent design team is a combination of scientists, technologists. . . aerospace. We have other interested people who have never designed a car before, so they are not restricted through lectures and this is helping us to explore the probabilities of this production process. »
When Baldry joined us in the presentation room and passed on his CV, I understood how a start-up can simply create such a vehicle. Baldry spent the last 1990s with Williams Formula One as a design engineer. his own company, Juno, which generated the kind of neat little sports cars that the English love in the days of track games. He also worked for the English sports car corporations Ginetta and TVR.
Czinger’s 21C is the state-of-the-art supercar since Gordon Murray’s McLaren F1 in the mid-90s, ensuring its early acceptance into the pantheon of heroic sports cars. State, broke production records for car laps at Laguna Seca on the Monterey Peninsula and the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) outside Austin, Texas. Watch the videos below. Kevin Czinger and Baldry assume that in six to nine months they will be able to revisit those tracks and reduce those records for many seconds. Keep in mind that the COTA record was held in the past through the brutal McLaren P1, one of the first 3 cars to carry the nickname “hypercar”.
The 21C is an 11 vehicle, the passenger is placed directly on the driver, either sitting in the middle along the keel of the chassis structure published in 3-d. The cabin is animated through the architecture of aviation, dazzling fighters and gliders, with a glass canopy arch of the large anti-roll bar built over the passenger with incredibly physically powerful A-pillars and the leading edge of the dashboard. A low-drag longtail edition will be available, tuned with less emphasis on the high-force bending capability of the stomach’s torsion downforce and more on the high-speed wake and continental turns.
We have several types in our powertrain that have joined us from the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 engine programme,” Baldry said. They are Luiz Oliveira and Kevin Shelton.
“Chris Wright will return in December from Honda Formula One with ten seasons under his belt, adding Mercedes,” Baldry said. “And then Jim Maher, who has painted at Bosch for over 8 years and has painted on similar hypercar systems like Mercedes-AMG Project One and Aston Valkyrie. He is at the head of the powertrain. If you need a team of speed killers that brings the respect and provenance of an exclusive powertrain, this equipment is a very smart start. After years of Circus Formula 1 (brutal regime, hours of paintings on tight deadlines, inevitable divorces) moving to the Southern California coast with a green card to create hypercars published in 3-D is very attractive. Czinger will have no trouble attracting the most sensitive talents.
Czinger’s 2. 88-liter, 950-horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine runs at 10,000 rpm. The engine runs on gasoline, but can also be configured to run on methane. In recent years, relying heavily on Formula 1 and Le Mans, Czinger is creating an exclusive engine to compete with any engine in the world. Czinger doesn’t buy batches of engines from Mercedes-AMG, Audi or Detroit like so many others Czinger is precisely the opposite of the kind of vaporware supercars and exotic projects of perverse vanity that I’ve noticed for over 35 years. it shows that it is as genuine as possible.
“The powertrain is similar to what you find in an LMP1 car [Le Mans racing car prototype]. The EV aspect has only 2. 8 kWh of storage. We use the newest A123 battery, like Formula 1, incredibly expensive and very powerful lithium-ions,” says Baldry. The cells themselves are capable of 1200 horsepower in terms of paint rate, however, in our formula they are reduced to 420. It’s still huge for such a package. We have 950 horsepower from the V8 biturbo combustion engine. And another three hundred from the electric front axle,” baldry says. It runs on an 800-volt architecture, which is the popular German consensus for battery-electric cars.
The X-Trac gearbox is one of the few parts that is rarely a Czinger creation, yet even here, Divergent and Czinger go beyond simple gear selection. If I had to bet, I would say that the details of the gearbox will be exclusive. to Czinger at launch, or perhaps in a tracking vehicle. Divergent’s 3-d printing will eventually include virtually every detail of Czinger vehicles.
“The upper downforce and low drag versions of the car use the same gear set, however, for the low-drag variant we can have an optional gear set for super V-Max functionality with a longer ratio,” baldry says. “In either form, the 21C is a road-approved vehicle that is fully FMVSS compliant, crash test and emissions compliant. The 21C will be approved for sale in North America, the EU and other primary markets for special cars, the need for exemptions for low volumes. The vehicle has a crash design to fit any other supercar available.
Jon Gunner, chief technology officer at Czinger, says: “The design of the 21C is designed to cope with all global protection requirements. These come with roof resistance controls. The federal roof controls much the most sensitive of the A-pillar with 3 times the weight of the vehicle, resulting in a local deviation of less than four inches. Occupants are also protected by front and side airbags, as well as prestressed seat belts. In addition to regulatory requirements, Czinger has also designed pyrotechnic bolts on the doors, If the car is down, the occupants can exit the vehicle safely. I repeat, this is not a steam effort.
“In terms of chassis, focus, recruitment in motorsport. We have Nick Alcock at the forefront of aerodynamics,” says Baldry. Alcock’s Formula 1 resume includes Renault, Williams and Lotus. He also worked in the United States for Don Panoz on the Panoz Indycar. The frame panels are a carbon fiber skin with no restrictions for aerodynamics, meaning the frame is not structural.
The car weighs 2910 pesos with liquids, about what a McLaren 765 Longtail weighs. It weighs several hundred pounds less than other gas-electric hybrids, a measure of the weight savings of parts published in 3-d.
Cooper Keller is Director of Testing and Quality and leads all curtain control plans, visitor control for Divergent and vehicle control progress for Czinger, as well as quality. Cooper promises that Divergent and Czinger are ISO 14001, ISO 9001, IATF 16949 and AS 9100 certified. It’s the quality of the Tier 1 supplier, not the vaporware. As seen in the images of the brake joint and the rear frame, the shapes are like human tendons and muscles, thicker and thinner, everything is curved and rotated with complex but sublime radii. The pieces appear to come from an alien spacecraft. These portions are the most productive sales tool for both the car and Divergent as a Tier 1 supplier. Czinger will offer consumers the option of suspension portions or the fixed rear frame for display.
Czinger will produce 80 copies of the $21C to $2 million, followed by larger, less excessive Czinger cars already in development, though they obviously intend to establish themselves in the most sensitive segment of the market. If Czinger doesn’t have 70, 80 or a hundred years of ingrained provenance, well, Czinger has the aura of Iron Man, California’s cutting-edge technology, and that’s the future, it’s the most productive provenance a company can hope for.
Machine the car
It is very unlikely to perceive Czinger vehicles without first perceiving Divergent 3D. Both corporations are so technologically complex that the father-son duo of Kevin and Lukas Czinger can be interpreted as Howard and Tony Stark, the Iron Men of the automotive world. Engineers and executives, the following can be much more challenging than the resulting hypercar. Here’s why Czinger has a fast provenance, a position in the sky of supercars. Here’s why serious creditors will need to own a 21C.
“When I first showed the specifications and design of the machine,” says Kevin Czinger, “people were literally telling me, ‘Are you going to create Jesus’ machine?’Is this a farce?'”
“This is our own software,” Czinger continues. We call those evolutionary structures bidirectional. We invent, build and own all the elements of the Divergent production system. Our hardware stack. We give the visitor a component of this value with 0 tools, full production value, flexibility. We decrease the mass, increasing the yield. An agnostic production system.
“We manufacture the full diversity of specially designed materials. And the sustainable circular economy system, dematerialization and the closed circuit. Mass production, rigidity, relief in the number of parts. Obviously, this production architecture is also collapsing the chain and the product progression process. “. »
“This printer can produce 12 arms in less than 469 milliliters per hour. The fastest option commercially today is probably to produce 30 to 40 milliliters,” says Czinger.
After 3 hours at the facility, I went to a long-planned lunch assembly with an automotive CEO and his top sensitive engineers. In a few days they visited Divergent and within a week a verification assignment was launched. Engineers from one of the most prominent brands in the world made the Torrance, and the result validated what I myself had noticed. To any CEO or automotive engineer reading this, let me say that if you don’t explore applying this procedure to at least your suspension components, you’re failing in your duties.
“This is an automated meeting with no meeting,” Czinger says. “We have developed a virtual engineering platform. We have been working with various corporations for 4 years. We have been rated through brands belonging to 3 of the five most sensitive OEMs in the world. Our first OEM production systems have SOPs in the first part of 2022. »
“Here, in all dimensions, you can optimize the structure, and then you can start integrating all the features and make it much more effective without tools or fasteners. We are fully qualified for the security structure, point 1, all quality management, all ISO, all audits. We are fully audited, fully qualified. Structures and production system
“You can design any component with equivalent design complexity in terms of cost. All meeting functions are integrated. So complexity is essentially free,” says Czinger. Divergent and Czinger integrate and reduce the concept, design, engineering, printing and assembly stages of specialized, high-performance automotive parts so closely that several steps in the progression procedure and integrate and simplify factors into a near-biological model.
“It’s an elegant architecture. I took an undefined technology approach,” says Czinger. “We want to greatly reduce the effect of production on the environment through dematerialization. We take 20 to 70% of the mass and power of those and then they are designed at the end of their life to be put back together and reshaped into printable powder and reprinted. You imprison all materials, as does the can industry. Fifty years ago, a can of beer required 83 grams of aluminum, almost entirely extracted. Today those 83 grams have more than thirteen grams and 76% of them are recycled. We want to do it in larger structures and then pass it on to our production infrastructure if we want a planet that survives.
“We started manufacturing systems that produced an independent suspension component. We took care of the customer’s hard points, their design, their cargo routes. We then build this design and verify it as opposed to the existing design. We were more than 20% of the mass of High Performance Production Vehicle Parts using Lacheck thin-walled aluminum molding technology. OEMs were asking us to withdraw 5%, which would be a game-changer. We got more than 20% of it.
“I’m looking to absolutely update the tools and checker stamping in all segments, starting with a minimally viable edition of this virtual system,” Czinger continues. “We’re going for almost 99% uptime and zero waste. “
“If you look at the brake caliper and the here,” Czinger says, taking the brake gasket in his hands and then passing it on, “we decreased the mass by about 40 percent. Imagine the same thing with an electric motor rotor and stator, all for hydraulics, all the ducts for thermal control and electronics, and those that disappear, and you just take the rotor and stator to the collision zone of the vehicle and generate a design around that has all those features.
“No human being can just design those pieces,” says Ewan Baldry. “This may not be achieved without those resilient tools. “Lukas Czinger adds that “the software translates the loading path. Place the place where it is needed for that precise loading route.
If Divergent can reduce the unsprung weight of suspension and brake systems by 30 or 40%, it means a radical replacement in the design and maximum functionality of sports cars. Divergent and Czinger 3D print all the main parts of a hypercar chassis and produce a gas-electric hybrid hypercar that weighs many pounds less than cars from European automakers.
“If you cut a cross-section of that frame, it would look like a human bone,” says Kevin Czinger. “Just as nature competes for fabrics and energy, and selects fabrics for eons, it does the same but within hours. “
“These are all made up,” he continues. There’s nothing like high-elongation printable aluminum with enough ductility for a shock other than the one you see here. There is no such thing as high-modulus aluminum with enough rigidity other than what you see here. All of them have patents pending. The abbreviation is to call it powder bed laser sintering to create the room.
“In our R
How is all this possible?” For Divergent, we have combined 3 technological pillars into a fully incorporated formula,” says Lukas. “The first is generative design. We don’t have the typical CAD engineers for surface and CAD design. put in combination a software team that created algorithms for the design of those parts. Our design procedure for, say, a more sensitive arm is as follows: here are the connection points, here are the charging instances it supports, here is the volume it can consume so that it doesn’t collide with any other formula in the vehicle, essentially press play, run those design algorithms, and this component is produced as a 3-d model.
“This formula is already about 3 to five times more than the blank frame economy. We put together about 3 consistent pieces in minutes,” explains Lukas. If I built a welding line, I would spend about 3 times what we spend today. “
“Our formula replaces all blank body welds with a cell-based gathering method, not lines. It is fully compatible with the car, however, it is assembled with a precision close to aerospace. And all tools remain consistent between assemblies. We can move from one meeting to another without converting the formula,” Lukas explains. Divergent has its own bonding agents and its own means to assemble and assemble complex and heavy portions such as rear frames with ordinary precision.
“If it were an outdated method,” Lukas explains, “we wouldn’t have a formula where you can modify the software without converting the hardware. There is no hardware that fits when the design is adjusted. You can produce a design whose maximum tolerance is about 2 times more accurate than your own old OEM. It does all its software programming, so all the robot’s motion trajectories, all the IPC formulas, are done offline in the automation software we write. movement trajectories, a signal for the generation of IPC in our own offline software package. Then we upload them to the cell. When we load those formulas through radio link to the cell, we already have a virtual meeting with the whole process, and we have verified that the portions are perfectly designed for this meeting process.
Divergent would possibly not replace the entire automotive industry overnight, however, any leading engineer or CEO whose company produces high-end functionality cars or special luxury cars deserves to make the pilgrimage to Torrance, California. From 20 to 40, 50 or even 60%, and integrates multiple purposes into a part published in 3D for singles, Divergent will become a must-have supplier for all sports car manufacturers and, over time, will have a significant effect on luxury cars of all kinds.