This car company set new track records to prove its 3D printing tech
Enlarge / The Czinger 21C features tandem seating and a 3.5:1 lift-to-drag ratio. (credit: Rolex/Tom O'Neal)
MONTEREY, Calif.—Perhaps the coolest thing I saw at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show was a concept car showing off the work of Divergent 3D. The intriguing thing wasn't the concept itself but rather the direct-metal laser sintering technique that Divergent and its founder Kevin Czinger were developing as a much more rapid way to build low-volume vehicles.
Czinger started developing the 3D printers after earlier co-founding an electric vehicle company. "I learned that what slows down advances in the auto industry is hard-metal tooling and stamping," Czinger told me in 2016. "You need hundreds of millions of dollars up front for hardware design and construction, which needs to be amortized, and changes to that hardware become prohibitively expensive."
Sounds cool—did it go anywhere?
All too often, we get a glimpse of a promising new technology and then never hear about it again. Happily, that's not the case here. Fast-forward six years, and not only are Divergent's 3D printers in use at OEMs around the world, but Czinger is using them to create his own vehicles. They were on display at the Quail, an event that's part summer garden party, part car show. It's now a hot spot for the ultra-low-volume, ultra-high-performance side of the car industry.