The Rise of 3D Printed Vehicles

Czinger Vehicles is a Southern-California based automaker with a unique vision. They believe that auto production can be changed. Czinger thinks that there is a way to not only increase production, but cut costs and achieve greater production in less time. How exactly do they propose to do so? 3D printing.

Czinger Vehicles is actually an offshoot of an already existing company, Divergent Technologies. Czinger was started by Divergent Tech CEO Kevin Czinger and his twenty-nine year old son, Lukas. Their goal is to prove that world-class vehicles can be built using 3D printing. Also not a revolutionary idea, several companies already have implemented this idea, but these companies have been very small, and the vehicles built were more economy-style. Czinger wants to take things to a whole new level.

The hypercar market is becoming overcrowded at this point. There are companies like Hennessy, Rivian and others building only hypercars. What Czinger is proposing is different. The father/son duo believes that 3D printing isn’t being used to its full potential. Rather than take their ideas to big corporate automakers they’ve decided to prove their own concept by 3D printing a hypercar.

Hypercars represent the pinnacle of automotive engineering. People watch professional sports to see athletes push the boundaries of human performance. The same idea applies to hypercars. When Rimac was started a few years ago, it was started by a young inventor who wanted to prove that electric vehicles weren’t a fad, that electric vehicles could compete on the world stage. Rimac is essentially continuing what Tesla started. Czinger wants to do for auto production what Rimac has done for electric power.

3D printing is an intriguing idea. Whether it will ever be applied to the scale of corporations like GM or Toyota remains to be seen. 3D printing does open up new avenues that are worth considering. Currently McLaren is the only well-known automaker to even consider 3D printing. Back in 2016 McLaren paid a fortune for an industrial 3D printer. The company was excited over the possibilities offered by 3D printing, in particular the ability to manufacture their own parts. Despite this, McLaren has yet to implement 3D printing on a mass scale. So far McLaren has used their massive printer to manufacture more specialty parts.

Here’s what makes Czinger so interesting; by implementing 3D printing on the level they are, then it now becomes possible to start a brand new auto company at a fraction of the cost. If you wanted to start a small-scale auto company it would cost you several billion dollars. Acquiring the parts alone would eat you alive in costs. Now with the refinement of 3D printing, it now becomes possible to build all of the necessary parts right in your own garage.

The ability to take control of your own manufacturing and production is huge. That is genuinely revolutionary and why Czinger vehicles is so interesting. If their strategy was implemented by just one major auto manufacturer then it would send seismic changes through the industry. Before that can happen, Czinger will have to prove that this is possible. They have already started by custom-building their own engine, a wildly overpowered V-8 capable of producing nearly 1,000 HP. 

In just a few short months the Czinger 21C will be available for purchase. This is not a cheap vehicle, it’s supposed to cost a minimum of two million dollars. The price tag puts the 21C in competition with Rimac. The difference being that the 21C is not electric powered, instead it has a custom-built V-8 capable of producing nearly 1,000 HP. A V-8 capable of this much power is worth an article all its own, but thats not our focus here. Our focus in on the fact that Czinger is the very first company to build world-class hypercars all in their own garage. Again this could lead to seismic changes in the industry. Specifically it would allow for greater quality control, it would lead to cheaper vehicles for consumers and would also allow for faster production times.

I’ll be watching the official debut of the Czinger 21C with high interest. I guarantee you that every major automaker will be watching as well. The possibilities opened with industrial 3D printing are truly exciting. Unlike the majority of supposed ‘changes’ implemented by automakers, this is a change that will actually affect you, the consumer, in a good way.