Koenigsegg Founder Confesses to Being Embarrassed by Tesla Roadster

The news about Tesla coming up with an all-new Roadster that could accelerate from 0-60mph in a staggering 1.9s took the world by storm. The world reacted with different degrees of bewilderment and excitement at its insane acceleration numbers.

Christian Von Koenigsegg, the man behind the high-performance Swedish cars and the founder and CEO of Koenigsegg Automotive AB, had more than his share of comments about the Tesla Roadster too. He actually confessed to being caught off guard by this new Tesla innovation, but as always, he has a plan up his sleeve.

Fighting back to be faster

Koenigsegg shared his incredulity at this Tesla development during an interview with Top Gear saying, “We kind of had our future mapped out, and then we heard about the new Tesla Roadster and its insane acceleration numbers, and we thought ‘damn, that’s put the gauntlet down.’ We thought, 'this is not okay.’”

The Swedish automobile manufacturer was then quick to collaborate with his engineers and find out precisely how Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed to achieve these acceleration numbers in the new Tesla Roadster. He found it inconceivable that it could go to such rates with the highest speed of 250mph.

“Sure, it must be really heavy, but that kind of acceleration? That’s frustrating!” he said. However, further investigations revealed that Musk’s claims had excellent foundations.

Who is Koenigsegg?

For those of you who are new to the world of Koenigsegg and his wonder cars, the limited-run Regera was his very first hybrid hypercar that was manufactured using hybridization and direct drive.

[embedded content]

Christian Von Koenigsegg is now investigating finding an even faster version to his competitor Tesla’s upcoming Roadster. While he is trying to find ways to beat his rival, Musk continues to talk about potential even faster versions that might combine rocket propulsion technology derived from SpaceX.

Should clarify that this is the base model performance. There will be a special option package that takes it to the next level.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2017

That said, Koenigsegg seemed to also have a comment on this comment made by Musk. He said that the world of automobiles is vast and never-ending with an almost limitless number of possibilities. Talking about his engines, he explained that his firm has just begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with their technology.

The founder also shared an example of these plausible opportunities saying, “Here’s an example: if we ignore fuel consumption for a moment… we have a fairly high compression ratio for our turbo V8 – 9.5 to 1 with 1.6 bar of boost. If we drop that to 8.8 to 1, we could boost to 2.2 bar, which is another 600bhp just like that, without putting more stress on your engine because your peak pressure doesn’t go up. And it would only consume about five percent more fuel.”

The future of both Tesla and Koenigsegg looks fast indeed with a lot of speedy new supercars on the way.

Via: Top Gear

Let's block ads! (Why?)