Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume III of B.H. Magazine. For access to future issues, subscribe here.
There once was a man named Elon Musk – funny name, funny guy (but not in a comedic way) – who decided to reinvent the entire car industry. His Tesla juggernaut made electric cars cool and fun to drive, and made him (and his shareholders) wildly rich.
This is history now. We accept it for what it is. Yet when Tesla started out, industry commentators and proper established car companies laughed at Musk’s hubris. How could one tiny company battle the behemoths?
Could it happen again? Could a company you’ve never heard of change the way we build cars, making them hilariously powerful and environmentally friendly at the same time?
Kevin Czinger, who has already built a car – the Czinger 21C – capable of hitting 100 km/h in 1.9 seconds (faster than a Formula 1 car) thinks so.
The Czinger 21C doesn’t just accelerate like a fighter jet. It looks like one, with the passenger sitting behind the driver for a proper Top Gun experience as it blasts from a standing start to 300 km/h in 15 seconds.
In the modern world, you might expect that kind of performance to come from a purely electric powertrain, but Kevin Czinger – who set up the company with son Lukas in 2019 – still believes in combustion for the sake of performance, and his car features a bespoke V8 engine connected to three electric motors.
What makes the 21C, and the Czinger approach, a potential game changer is that it is, aside from the powertrain, almost entirely 3D printed, and designed with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The idea that motor vehicles could effectively be produced using digital manufacturing, rather than the hugely expensive, carbon-intensive methods car makers have used for years, is as radical as the idea of Tesla used to sound.
It has already captured the interest of major brands, including Aston Martin, Bugatti, and McLaren, as well as a few others Czinger can’t officially talk about. Aerospace brands, including General Atomics, are also investing in what Czinger dubs its Divergent Adaptive Production System.
Kevin Czinger’s career has followed an interesting path: from federal prosecutor to Goldman Sachs executive, venture capitalist, and co-founder of an electric battery manufacturer. It was his last position that led him to an Eureka moment while visiting a mega-factory in China, where he witnessed the monstrous levels of CO2 emitted in the production of “clean” EVs.
“Environmentally, I thought I was kind of saving the world with EV batteries, until I did the analysis of the emissions from manufacturing them, and realised that China was using almost exclusively coal-fired power generation for its factories,” Kevin explains.
“And I’m standing there thinking… manufacturing is really the driver of emissions. We needed to move from these analogue, capital-intensive material and energy inefficient ways of manufacturing things – stamping, casting, and so on – to fully optimised digital manufacturing.”
“So I sat down and said, ‘I’m gonna start with a clean sheet of paper and create that system.’”
The Czinger approach is to build much lighter cars – EVs are notoriously heavy because of their giant batteries – using a unique aluminium alloy and 3D printing, which makes them greener, because the production process is far cleaner and leaner, and involves no smelting or welding.
“We’ve also designed these aluminium alloys to be easily recycled; so there are no rare-earth minerals, and there’s no complicated process with melting these materials,” Kevin adds.
“We can quickly re-optimise them, turn them back into a standard 3D printable powder, and print new components.”
Kevin and Lukas are car enthusiasts and as such they have chosen to prove the potency of their concept by building something slightly ludicrous (the 21C) rather than a boxy city runabout. Tesla also started out with a sports car: the Roadster.
This hybrid hypercar makes a truly staggering 932kW and weighs just 1,250kg – driving it must feel like being fired through the Hadron Collider. Earlier this year, a very brave man named Chris Ward drove the 21C at the famous Goodwood Festival of Speed, where the world’s maddest cars gather to set the fastest time up a rich man’s extensive driveway. The 21C wasn’t just the fastest production car this year, its time was the fastest ever for a road-legal vehicle.
“Setting the record at Goodwood was a momentous moment for Czinger,” Lukas Czinger tells us. “It’s a testament to our technology, our team, and our commitment to pushing boundaries. These moments remind us of why we’re here and how we’re shaping the future of performance vehicles.”
“When you’re building something so revolutionary, you have to be patient and believe when others do not. I am grateful that over a relatively short time period we have established a significant technology, vehicle, and brand,” he adds.
“We’re not just focused on making cars; we’ve created a new way to manufacture and assemble complex structures. The company is scaling in line with our plan, but the majority of our growth is still ahead, which keeps us very motivated and excited for the future.”
Lukas, who confirms his company has had interest from collectors in Australia wanting to punish their own insides with a 21C (at a cost of around $2.2 million), describes Czinger as “a tier-one supplier, and we are in production with more than half a dozen OEMs that understand this is the future of digital design and manufacture.”
He also explained that Czinger “doesn’t view EVs as the answer in the near term,” particularly for performance vehicles. “Too much of the emotion and thrill of driving is lost and the power density does not yet allow for mass competitive vehicles and consistent power output over an endurance period.”
While the company has had notable success in its four years of operation, I had to ask: how has working so closely together as a father and son team worked out, and has Lukas, 30, ever been sent to his room by his Dad, 65, for disagreeing with him?
“It’s a unique journey to work with your father in creating a business over a number of years as opposed to coming into a mature company and ‘passing the torch’ – the years of building with him will always be looked back at as the good times,” Lukas says.
“There’s no magic recipe beyond understanding each other’s perspectives, playing to our strengths, and being united by the bigger mission. It also helps that we both love what we’re doing. We’re not just building cars – we’re creating a revolution in manufacturing, and that’s something we’re both deeply invested in.”
If you’ve enjoyed this feature article on the Czinger 21C, consider a few more of our favourite stories – direct from the pages of B.H. Magazine:
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- Daikoku: A Window Into The Soul Of Japan’s Mythical Car Scene
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