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.
WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- It you take a major auto company years,in some cases a decadeto design, engineer,and build a car from the ground up.There are thousands ofhands working togetherto make it happen.So I thought,in the year 2020, is therea better way to make a car?Yeah. Turns out there is.And it's called the Czinger 21C.(exciting music)The Czinger 21C is anAmerican made hypercardesigned by AI andbuilt using 3D printers.Is this foreshadowing the way theautomotive industry is going to operatein the future or is it justa gimmick to sell cars?Why don't we find out?(lofi beat)Thanks to Raycon forsponsoring this episode.I used to hate the city,(honking)the bumper to bumper chaos,(honking continues)(knocking)but with 6 hours of playtime,these everyday E25 earbudstake me right out of the chaos(honking)and right into the frontrow of the jazz club.- Jerry come on, we gotta shoot.- Ooh, that's all Tony,tickling the ivories.They sound just as amazingas other top audio brands,but they're half the price.Better yet,- (knocking) Jerry!- They offer a free 45 day return policy,So you can make sure you'regetting the earbuds you want.- Jerry, we gotta shoot.What are you doing?He's at it again.He calls it a Raycon spotor something like that.No with all that bass andcompact noise isolating design,it's probably at a jazz club right now.(jazz music plays)- Tony is tickling away my ear holes.- (sighs) He usually finishesby telling you to clickthe link in the descriptionor go to buybuyraycon.com/bumper for 15% off.But who knows when that'll be.- Oh, Tony,(jazz music resumes)don't tickle my air holes sogood, that should be illegal.Manufacturing a car hasmore or less been the samefor the last 120 years.Manufacturing facilities are expensiveand take up loads of space.For example, Volkswagen'sflagship assembly plantin Wolfsburg, Germanyis bigger than the entiredistrict of Monte Carlo.And the methods haslargely remained the samefor manufacturingsince manufacturing in theautomotive industry existed.As technology grew,these processes got morerefined and more efficient,but they still require alot of bespoke machinery,and a lot, I mean a whole lot of space.But with the growth ofrefinement and efficiencythere comes a new thought processand brand new technologies,namely artificial intelligence,and something calledcomputational engineering.(funky beat)Kevin Czinger, CEO and founder of Czinger,is tapping artificial intelligencein a room full of 3D printersinto the ring to make an allAmerican, 1,250 horsepower,270 mile per hour,hypercar called the 21C,which stands for twenty first century.Czinger decided to completelyreinvent the processof making a car,and instead work from aninside out methodology,letting the engineeringdictate the design of the car,and then drape the body partsover the structure to make asleek yet aggressive machine.And a byproduct of this,is that Czinger AI eliminatesa huge portion of the production process.First, we've gotta geta little crash courseon artificial intelligence,which consists of two main ideas,machine learning and decision making.Machine learning is essentiallywhat it says on the label.It's a computer that learns thingsthe same way people learn.By watching YouTube videos.Okay. Also it learns through experience.And the more experience a machine has,the more data it has tointerpret and analyze,thereby learning more information.The second part is called decision-making.Programmers will give the computercertain parameters to followthat are set out by the engineersand the creators of the car.And these are things like mounting points,and size restriction,as well as strength properties.There are a ton of parametersthat have to be factoredin, so many in fact,that when you build acar in the real world,it takes thousands of peoplespending thousands of hoursand millions of dollars todo what a computer can doin a fraction of the time.You're basically definingthe rules of the gameand then pressing enter.It's very simplified,but you get my point.Now AI can even accountfor external factors,things like wind resistance and gravityand other natural phenomenon.And a result of this is thatartificial intelligence producessome crazy looking designs.- Nature, you know, obviouslythrough trial and errorand evolution, is very viciously competingfor material and energy,which is why, you know,those structures havematerial where it's needed,no material where it isn't.And it looks like a leaf structureor, you know, the internalstructure of a bone marrow,other things, right?That you have say amajor automotive companywill have all of its own load cases,you know, road durabilitycases and other things,say the machine is running those cases,selecting materials out of a databasethat have already been correlated,meaning physically testedagainst all of these different load cases,and is generating a structure.So then you have themost efficient structurefor the case that's needed,that uses the minimum amount of material,meaning, you know, you'rereducing mass to the max,and still meeting a performanceset of requirements.- And this sort of super efficient designalso comes into playwith the normalnon-structural parts of a car.Typical car containsabout a mile of wiringto keep all of the piecesand parts connectedand talking to each other.Now a mile of wiring is goingto take up a lot of space.And with this computational engineeringand artificial intelligence,finding the most efficientway to design a carit's not out of the questionthat Czinger can incorporateall of the pathwaysfor that wiring, not to mention,all of the ducting for thethings like the air flowand the AC vents.Normally cuts and holes have to be madeto accommodate those sorts of things.But with this method, theycan incorporate it directlyinto the chassis of the car.This allows for huge portionsof the assembly processto be handed off to software programs,not only to diagnose the inefficienciesin the engineering process,but also build around those inefficiencieswith the structuralinformative design of the car.Basically AI is learningthe shortest routeto route that wire,so that it's using theleast amount of wireand taking up the least amount of space.It's just way smarterthan a bunch of people.This means that a humanbeing could never reallymanufacture the parts thatare being designed by Czinger,which is the other componentof how this hypercar gets built.That's additive manufacturing.Better known as 3D printing.(soft guitar beat)Now this method directly contraststo subtractive manufacturing process,used in the majority ofthe automobile space.It eliminates any and all wasteassociated with manufacturing,because the process onlyuses the necessary amountof material needed.A 3D printer doesn'tprint out extra material.Now the 21C is primarily manufacturedout of aluminum alloy,titanium, and carbon fiber.So how do you print out things like that?Well, Czinger uses a methodof additive manufacturingthat incorporatesatomized powdered metals,in a high powered laserthat essentially meltsthe individual grainsof the material together,and builds the productone layer at a time.Once the first layerof material is created,the printer pushes a new layerof atomized metal material across it,and the laser goes back to workmaking the second layer of material.It's like building the cake.Okay, you put one layer on,then frickin' put another layer on.Then you put another layer--(beep)The 3D printing is the only viable methodfor this sort of manufacturing,because of the factthat the materials aredesigned computationally.There's no sort of tooling out therethat can make these designswith the strength and structural integritythat's required forthem to work optimally.It's just not humanly possible.Which is why Czinger doesn't use humans.In the Czinger method,we're sort of obsolete.They took our job!Czinger doubled down on the obsolescenceof the current car creation processand developed somethingcalled the automated unitor A.U.And that uses a bespokeassembly method calledvertical assembly.One A.U. is a 50 foot by50 foot set of robotic armsthat work in total harmony with each otherto fully assemble a car.Some of the robots holdthe chassis of the car upand rotate it as needed,while the other arms takeall of the pieces andparts of the chassis,and then assemble them.The 3D printed parts get incorporatedinto the A.U.,and assembled with insanely low variance.We're talking about fourone thousandths of an inchof precision.So there's no frickin' doorgaps on this computer car.It's tight baby.Now the car as a whole takesabout 3000 hours to assemblewhich if you're wondering,that's 125 days,but the assembly of thestructure of the 21Ctakes less than an hour.And the reason that Czingercan assemble the baseof the car so quickly,is because of all of these differentbleeding edge technologiesworking togetherat the same time.Each robot can move at upto five miles per hour,which doesn't sound fast,but when you consider thatthe robotic arm can do thatwhile holding an entire car,(audience whoas)it sounds just a bit more impressive.And also each arm is operatingwithin its own set of objectives,while taking into account the objectivesof the other robotic arms.Each one of the A.U.s operateas an independent manufacturing cell.It's totally autonomous,it needs little to no input from peopleor other processes.Other than actually getting the parts,both 3D printed and otherwise,there's little that needsto be done with the A.U.,other than pressing go on the computerthat runs the fricking thing.A side effect of this sort of assembly,is that the robots can bevery easily reprogrammedto accomplish a new taskor make a new product.Unlike the dyes and pressescurrently used to make parts,in the current manufacturing process,Czinger's A.U. simply gets reprogrammedto incorporate the newpieces or new processinto the vertical assembly,making the process essentially as simpleas clicking a button.Again, this is a computer that'sdoing all the work for you.The robot in the A.U. itselfare designed agnostic,which allows for theassembly line to be changedin a matter of minutes,rather than a matter of hours.There's no additional toolingthat needs to be installed.This is why a conventional assembly linecan cost $500 million or more.Czinger's vertical assemblymethod is estimatedto 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 manufacturingmakes the A.U. scalable,which is where this conceptreally starts to showits potential impact as amanufacturing process as a whole.So as it stands, one A.U.can theoretically pump out10,000 21C vehicle structures each year,and it costs a small fractionof what a conventionalassembly line costs.However, the A.U.s arelimited by the amount of spacethat'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 saya hundred thousand square foot warehouse,we're looking at 40 A.U.sall working at the same time,which in their current state,could make 400,000 car structures a year.That's almost double the amountof Corollas made just last year.Now Czinger's approach to making a caris small scale right now.They only plan to build 80models, but that's okay though,because the net resultof all these bleeding edge technologiescolliding underneath one roof,is arguably one of the most advancedand insane hypercarsthat has ever been built.Like ever. Like ever.Like--- Ever!- As a car, this thing is just as bonkersas the methods used to make it.The Czinger team is constantly talkingabout how the SR 71 Blackbirdwas a massive point ofinspiration for this car,which if you didn't know,is probably the mostamazing plane ever builtin the history of making planes.Even down to the front view of the car,it's meant to mimic thefront view of the SR 71,and be as slick as possibleto cut through the airlike a razor blade.And from the front, it basicallylooks just like three humpsand a few vents,which is remarkably similar to the plane.This copycatting comes as no surprise,considering the plane cango over 2000 miles an hour.Czinger is coming out withtwo versions of the 21C,the first of which is a track only variantthat's meant to just absolutely smasha bunch of track records.It has yet to be seen but we'll see.In the second variantit'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 topspeed of 270 miles an hourfrom a 2.88 liter twin turbo V8,and two little batteriespowering the front wheels,not to mention, it can gozero to 60 in 1.9 seconds.That's pretty quick.If computational engineeringallows us to design carsthat were otherwise impossible to design,and then 3D printing actually allowsfor those cars to be built,then cars are going tostart getting crazy.And you can think of the 21Cas the world's fastestproof of concept car.Thanks to everyone over at Czingerfor letting us pick your brain.I got to speak to anotherCEO of a car company,that's two.Thanks to Jens, thechief commercial officerfor all your help.Thank you guys for watching B2B.Follow us on Instagramat Donut, @donutmedia.Follow me @jeremiahburton,till next week, bye for now.
