Koenigsegg is Developing a €1m Hybrid Supercar with Freevalve Tech

Koenigsegg recently announced that it had decided to grow into a full-fledged automaker by partnering with Swedish automotive holding company NEVS. Now, in a conversation with Top Gear, Christian von Koenigsegg has revealed what will be the first product to come out of the new partnership. Don’t hold your breaths, it’s not an SUV or a saloon, at least for the time being.

In 2020, the brand will reveal a brand new hybrid supercar with a price tag of around €1 million. “We’ve been looking to expand our offering because basically, our brand has outgrown our production volumes by quite a big margin,” the boss told Top Gear. “We have several years of delivery time on the super-exclusive hypercars we’re building today.”

While Koenigsegg didn’t explain what exactly he is planning, he offered a number of insightful comments. “It’s a different volume, a different segment of car, where we’re seeing a gap which exists in the market.” Besides serving the yet unknown segment, the supercar will also help Koenigsegg grow its volumes. “(But) we do think if we make a super-exclusive, custom built supercar at a slightly lower price (that’s the €1m mark) we could get the volumes into the hundreds.” For reference, Koenigsegg currently churns out around 20 cars out of its Angelhom factory each year.

While higher affordability and volume from Koenigsegg sounds like an interesting prospect, it’s the tech that has got us most excited. The upcoming supercar will be Koenigsegg’s first model to use its ‘Freevalve’ camless combustion engine technology along with electrification. “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,” von Koenigsegg said.

On top of that, we could also see the hybrid supercar utilizing Regera’s Direct Drive tech which does away with the transmission. “I think having a smaller battery pack and combining it with a CO2 neutral combustion engine is a very enticing, exciting, lightweight, sporty solution for a sports car.”

Source: Top Gear