A.I. Designed this Car

The Czinger A.U.s operate as an independent manufacturing cell. It's totally autonomous, it needs little to no input from people or other processes. Other than actually getting the parts, both 3D printed and otherwise, there's little that needs to be done with the A.U., other than pressing go on the computer that runs the thing. A side effect of this sort of assembly is that the robots can be very easily reprogrammed to accomplish a new task or make a new product. Unlike the dyes and presses currently used to make parts, in the current manufacturing process, Czinger's A.U. simply gets reprogrammed to incorporate the new pieces or new process into the vertical assembly, making the process essentially as simple as clicking a button. This is a computer that's doing all the work for you.

The robot in the A.U. itself are designed agnostic, which allows for the assembly line to be changed in a matter of minutes, rather than a matter of hours. There's no additional tooling that needs to be installed. This is why a conventional assembly line can cost $500 million or more. Czinger's vertical assembly method is estimated to only cost about three million. Imagine being able to save $497 million in expenses, not to mention nine miles of space. What would you do with $497 million? Put a link in the comment.

I would, I'd buy Noland. (laughs)

This closed loop of manufacturing makes the A.U. scalable, which is where this concept really starts to show its potential impact as a manufacturing process as a whole. So as it stands, one A.U. can theoretically pump out 10,000 21C vehicle structures each year, and it costs a small fraction of what a conventional assembly line costs.

However, the A.U.s are limited by the amount of space that's available for them, obviously, and as it stands, one A.U. takes up 2,500 square feet. Now, if we scale that up to say a hundred thousand square foot warehouse, we're looking at 40 A.U.s all working at the same time, which in their current state, could make 400,000 car structures a year. That's almost double the amount of Corollas made just last year.

Czinger's approach to making a car is small scale right now. They only plan to build 80 models, but that's okay though, because the net result of all these bleeding edge technologies colliding underneath one roof, is arguably one of the most advanced and insane hypercars that has ever been built.

Like ever. Like ever. Like---

As a car, this thing is just as bonkers as the methods used to make it. The Czinger team is constantly talking about how the SR 71 Blackbird was a massive point of inspiration for this car, which if you didn't know, is probably the most amazing plane ever built in the history of making planes.

Even down to the front view of the car, it's meant to mimic the front view of the SR 71, and be as slick as possible to cut through the air like a razor blade. And from the front, it basically looks just like three humps and a few vents, which is remarkably similar to the plane.

This copycatting comes as no surprise, considering the plane can go over 2000 miles an hour. Czinger is coming out with two versions of the 21C, the first of which is a track only variant that's meant to just absolutely smash a bunch of track records. It has yet to be seen but we'll see.

In the second variant it's going to have less downforce, and be a road legal car. And now because it has less down force, it gets super duper slippery, and can achieve a top speed of 270 miles an hour from a 2.88 liter twin turbo V8, and two little batteries powering the front wheels, not to mention, it can go zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds.

That's pretty quick. If computational engineering allows us to design cars that were otherwise impossible to design, and then 3D printing actually allows for those cars to be built, then cars are going to start getting crazy. And you can think of the 21C as the world's fastest proof of concept car.

Thanks to everyone over at Czinger for letting us pick your brain. I got to speak to another CEO of a car company, that's two. Thanks to Jens, the chief commercial officer for all your help. Thank you guys for watching B2B. Follow us on Instagram at Donut, @donutmedia. Follow me @jeremiahburton, till next week, bye for now.