Czinger 21C

Gaz

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Pronounced Zinger, like the KFC delicacy.

There has been lots of media focus in recent years on electric cars, innovation and the next generation of motoring, but this is actually the first vehicle in a long time that's really excited me.

Sure, it's got a crazy power figure (1250bhp), relatively light weight for a hypercar (1183kg dry), insane performance figures (0-60 in 1.9 secs and 248mph in under 30 secs), a great powerplant (2.9 twin-turbo V8 which revs to 11,000rpm, coupled with electric motors at each front wheel), and looks like a race car for the road - but it's not the first or only car to achieve any of those things.

It's how the car is built which is novel. The company founder Kevin Czinger was involved in a separate project in China aimed at converting traditional combustion engine architectures to electric propulsion. During this process, he did a lot of cost analysis and analysis of traditional car manufacturing techniques - techniques which (despite adding automation to production lines) haven't changed hugely in 100 years - it's still a lot of metal bashing and fitting panels and so on. As part of a £500m investment he calculated that only £30m or so was focused on converting to electric, the rest was re-tooling of a production line, re-tooling the body-in-white processes like welding and riveting, etc.

So even in the life cycle of a 2020 electric vehicle which is presented to us as ultra modern and ultra efficient and ultra clean, from the inception to end of production stage there are still very old, inefficient and expensive processes at play in actually building the chassis and body.

His company redesigned the entire manufacturing process and is hugely focused on 3D printing, using space-age materials. Any part of the car that can be 3D printed, is. The 3D printing also allows more flexibility of design and purpose - for example, the exhaust backbox is now part of the crash structure (!). With these new processes, they've set up a robotic build system which can manufacture 10,000 cars per year in an area which takes up the space of around 3 double garages. Component parts like suspension components have been redesigned from the ground up, they use the minimum weight and material required so there is no excess. They've also gone with a novel tandem seating layout - like a jet - which has allow them to really reduce the wheelbase and aerodynamics of the car.

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pablo

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**** I could murder a Zinger burger at the minute :eek:

Amen brother

I do hate the term "3d printed car". Its not a 3d printed car. Its a car made of a lot of components some of which happen to be 3d printed. You cant 3d print an engine, or a diff, or a battery.
 

gav525

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Looks class that, usually they end up looking rotten but I like that!

Future is definitely looking interesting!
 

Gaz

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Gaz
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Amen brother

I do hate the term "3d printed car". Its not a 3d printed car. Its a car made of a lot of components some of which happen to be 3d printed. You cant 3d print an engine, or a diff, or a battery.

I don’t think there’s any expectation that it’s 100% 3D printed, but a vast majority of the cars components are - body, suspension components, seats, virtually all the metal parts and composite/carbon parts. So there’s a bit of artistic license in calling it a 3D printed car but it’s closer to the truth than any other car I’ve seen
 

impact

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You cant 3d print an engine, or a diff,

Well now ... technically these days you can, or for at least many bits of both you can.
Company I work for does just this in one of our Canadian plants.

Its not though a remotely close thing production wise for your average car but for prototyping and small run production parts its a thing.
Its also not how most people who have seen the cheap 3d plastic printers imagine, even calling it printing is a bit of a misnomer.
Stuff when it comes off the process may still need machining work done, it never just "lifts" out printed and ready to use.
Some parts aren't 3d printed specifically but are instead cast using digitally printed sand cores which one of the companies we work with does for making production engine components for a powerboat manufacturer. This saves a fortunate in equipment, dies and time that you would normally need.
 
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