Koenigsegg Hypercars To Get Volcano Fuel: New Type Of Renewable Fuel Being Considered

As per Christian Von Koenigsegg, founder and chief executive of Koenigsegg Automotive, the company is experimenting with high-voltage and high-energy-density battery packs, and biofuels made from the emissions produced by volcanoes for environmentally "benign" and carbon-neutral cars.

Koenigsegg was founded in 1994, and since then has been chasing top speed records with each of their successive models. However, the Swedish manufacturer has announced last year that the company will not chase top speed records anymore and instead will be focusing on efficient and sustainable propulsion technology.

Electric sports cars can be quite heavy as they require large batteries to sufficiently provide good range and performance, and this invariably goes against the sporty nature of the car. Hence the need for a new technology arises.

Koenigsegg seems to like the idea of an extreme combustion engine technology running on renewable fuel. This way, the car remains carbon-neutral even though it uses combustion. To achieve this, Koenigsegg is looking at extracting energy from volcanoes.

Christian Von Koenigsegg was quoted as saying, "So there is this technology from Iceland, it was invented there, where they cap the CO2 emittance from semi-active volcanoes and convert that into methanol. And if you take that methanol and you power the plants that do the conversion of other fuels and then power the ship that transports the those fuels to Europe or the U.S. or Asia, wherever it goes, you put the fuel completely CO2-neutral into the vehicle.

He further said, "Of course with the correct after treatment systems, depending on the environment you're in, you can kind of clean up the particles in the atmosphere while you're using the engine. So you can be very much environmentally conscious doing that. It's just a fun aspect of renewable fuels that are not talked so much about, but there are many, many other technologies that are coming up."

Koenigsegg is also planning to double the current production capacity in a span of two to three years and further expand to a thousand cars a year in a few years' time. To help with this, Christian has hired former Tesla executive, Evan Horetsky to change the Swedish automaker's footprint by bringing in new technology to suit production at much greater volumes.

Thoughts On Koenigsegg Hypercars Relying On Volcano Fuel

Koenigsegg is one of those automotive manufacturers that can combine pinnacle-performance and in-house developed state-of-the-art technology. With Koenigsegg's newfound direction, we are yet to see where the Swedish Manufacturer will lead the industry in future. It is a rather interesting concept, but the question is, will we see this technology going into production?