Koenigsegg’s Next Supercar Will Have a Camless Engine

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Earlier this week, Koenigsegg announced that it had sold a 20-percent stake in the companyto National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), the automaker trying to make all-electric cars based on old Saabs. What is Koenigsegg seeking with this deal? Well money, obviously, but more volume, too. And it’s chasing volume in the most Koenigsegg-y way possible.

Pictured above: the hybrid, gearbox-less Koenigsegg Regera.

Company founder and boss Christian von Koenigsegg told Top Gear that it’s working on a new hybrid supercar with a pricetag of around €1 million ($1.15 million) to increase its annual sales to a few hundred cars. Oh, and it’ll have an engine without camshafts.

Yes, Koenigsegg is apparently right on the cusp of bringing its innovative Freevalve technology to the market. Instead of using traditional camshafts to open and close valves, a Freevalve engine uses pneumatic actuators. This allows far more control over what the engine does. Theoretically, a Freevalve engine can run on diesel, gas, or alcohol with no mechanical changes—though not at the same time—and can even switch from a two-stroke to a four-stroke cycle. Speaking to Jalopnik in 2014, Koenigsegg said using camshafts was like using a broom to play a piano, while pneumatic actuators are more like using fingers.

“Our ambition is that this car will be completely CO2 neutral,” Koenigsegg told Top Gear. The company is aiming to do so by combining a Freevalve engine with hybrid technology sourced from NEVS. “Given the Freevalve technology, we can actually cold-start the car on pure alcohol, down to -30 degrees Celsius, so there’s no need for any fossil fuel mix then. The idea is to prove to the world that even a combustion engine can be completely CO2 neutral.”

Koenigsegg seems to imply this hybrid will come in addition to the soon-to-arrive successor to the Agera RS. Last year, Koenigsegg told us his company will always aim to offer at least two models. Apparently that means a low-volume supercar and a really low-volume hypercar.

We’ve reached out to Koenigsegg for additional info, and we should know a lot more about the company’s plans in the coming weeks. We’re incredibly excited, and you should be too.

By: Chris Perkins, January 31, 2019

For more cars, visit: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/a26098563/koenigsegg-hybrid-supercar-camless-freevalve-engine/

Source: https://www.roadandtrack.com/