Lukas Czinger walks through the 21C hypercar: AI-designed, 3D-printed, road-legal, and setting track records in 5 days

right here.

And uh we're back.

It's fascinating. I mean I I I think we hang out long enough. Jordy's eventually gonna browbeat you into doing the McLaren track and eventually making road cars or something [laughter] or or you know just like uh

yeah just fully road legal. Yeah.

What how how difficult is that process?

Oh, it's difficult cuz we went through this is not an EV car. It's a strong hybrid. So it has an EV system but a combustion engine as well. And we went through full California carb emissions compliance on that V8. Just heard it start up, right? And that is a difficult process because they're looking at while the car is running, when the car first starts, what the evaporation is of fuel or oil in a what they call shed test as well. So there's a huge amount of requirements to actually certify that car. I think the amount of fuel you actually burn in the certification process might not actually make it logical for cars that are this low volume. Interesting.

But you go through that and you show that this car is actually designed to be environmentally friendly with that V8. What would you do if you're making a track only version?

We would strip out a lot of weight and a lot of the safety monitoring software and systems. So, first off, you're talking about all your airbags go, all your passive safety environment goes, a lot of electronics that are there for redundancy.

Do you have any that have a full roll cage in them or or was the intention just like, hey, we want to set records with

Yeah. Yeah. So, road car, right? Maybe in the future we'd make a track only car. it would be different uh almost entirely. That roof design, the carbon A-pillars that run all the way across, that is rated for a rollover cage. So, you can roll that vehicle and have similar performance to a rollover cage, but integrated there. You don't want a roll cage in a road vehicle

because it's a very hard surface in the car and if you're not harnessed in, you're going to move more and you're going to hit your head against it if you get in a crash. Oh, sure. So the roll cage on the track where you have the harness on and the helmet makes sense, but the roll cage without the harness and no helmet, it actually is a major hazard on the road.

Yeah. Talk more about the the safety approval uh getting the car road legal. Is is there a hurry up and wait element while you're in the queue? There are other cars and there's a rate limiting factor there or is it more a quick back and forth but you're making dozens of changes constantly? What's the actual process like? So, it is an iterative process. It is known to be a real headache for certain OEMs in terms of the timing and attention that they get and how quickly they can iterate.

And I'm sure if you're like Ford and you're like, there's a new Corolla coming or that's Toyota, but [laughter] there's a new, you know, there's a new F-150 coming every year with a refresh and we're changing this. They they have a whole system set up. It's it's not it's not as bespoke. So, they must have a whole team for it. You sort of have to build. California carbs credit. I think they saw that this was one of the first new OEMs in America period

and there was a narrative that they wanted to support there as well and we managed to get their attention and our team was able to work with them effectively. So I don't know

how much are you using this as a as part of the sales process when you're pitching

uh let's say other OEMs to to make parts with you guys. Were you saying like, "Hey, if you don't believe me, get in the let's go for

early on it was like the proof is in the pudding moment, right? You come to our factory, you see our car, you can drive it. If you're Bugatti or McLaren or Aston Martin, you see that and that's a huge benefit, right? So, we use that a lot early on in the company as a sales tool." Now, in defense, you know, we're hosting anyone from Secretary Hegsath to a CEO of a prime, when they see a company that can integrate a roadleal vehicle and they see that manufacturing process, it just builds a lot of confidence, right? There's a cool narrative, Xth loved revving that car, but there's also a capability narrative and that systems engineering is proven out through that car.

Yeah. Yeah. How how I mean, I was looking at the your your careers website. You're hiring tons of people. uh how scaled is the is the manufacturing plant? How large is the team? How large is the business? How are you growing these years?

So, we've gone in the last three years from not being a defense focused business and divergent to being a defense focused business. We're dual use, dual tech. So, we do have our commercial arm, the auto business is growing, our supply to really the European luxury brands is growing, but the focus is on defense right now. Three years ago, we had zero contracts. Today, we're on over 40 active contracts. And that's what's really unique about Divergent is we're not competing head-to-head with Andreal and Locked and Rathon. Rather, we're servicing all of the primes. Totally. So, you can build this horizontal manufacturing layer as a service to all of them. You can bet not on one to five programs a record, but rather service 100 programs a record over time and be that manufacturing supplier for them. We've gone through that journey of first refactoring the company to work on defense,

winning our first contracts,

delivering our first prototypes, flying those, proving the performance of a new technology, and then actually in the last 6 months, winning our first scaled production programs. Now, if you come to the facility, you'll see exit rates at around 100 a month of main bodies for large cruise missile systems. So 80 a month or 100 a month. It's not high volume for auto, but for our defense landscape, making a thousand missiles per year, that's on the high volume side of things. That's what divergence factory in torrent is already turnurning out. Now, we've almost gotten to full capacity on our Torrance facility with those contracts. We're starting to look at factory 2, three, four, five. We got multiple states that we're,

you know, kind of shopping and partnering with right now. And then also looking at California because it makes sense for especially the startup community here which are great partners for us to have another manufacturing platform here.

Yeah. What about uh other applications outside of defense and automotive uh maritime comes to mind? I can imagine a lot of that uh additive manufacturing technology being useful on high-speed boats, yachts, I don't know. Uh aviation planes. We were talking about Harrison Ford crashing Cessnas all day long. Yeah, maybe it's more reliable manufacturing. Uh but what what other areas have you at least thought about expansion into?

Yeah, the TAM for this system is so large and that's a blessing, but you need to be disciplined in what you address first and second and third. Right now, it's a primary focus on defense within that. looking at largely munition systems and then looking at torpedoes and similar structures but on the the Navy application side of defense we look to space. So we're doing quite a bit of work in space optimization mass saving there really matters. So you think about things like satellite buses as we get more and more launch vehicles and they're carrying different payloads into space. What is the structure that essentially attaches those to to the launch vehicle? We got several programs ongoing there. And then you look at at diversion over 10 years. Really any metal structure that takes a complex load path so has some sort of force that's interacting with should be designed by the platform and manufactured by it. So you think commercial air, you think oil and gas, you think mining vehicles. Um you even think over time as the prices come down enough construction and where can it get into uh almost the city planning side of of the equation as well.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Wow.

Um, what what is what are you seeing on the hypersonic side? I know a lot of it's under wraps, but we've talked to Castellian and some other folks that are thinking about this and just broadly the defense industry has been talking about the hypersonic gap uh over the the cruise missile. Um, are you excited about that? Are you following that story at all?

Absolutely. You know, we're working on multiple hypersonic programs right now designing primary structure for these vehicles. you know, in terms of narrative or or when I zoom out a notch, you need both. You need the affordable cruise missile that's $200,000 instead of three million. You also need the hypersonics capability across different classes of hypersonics. Okay?

And for us, what do we need to be good at at divergent? We need to be great with our material science. So, we need the right nickelbased alloys that can get very hot and still perform. So, that's different than aluminums that you saw mostly on the car. We've designed several of those materials. We have commercially available ones. We've got ones that the government has actually contracted us to do a special materials development for a higher performing uh version of what's commercially available today. And then we need to be able to print these at scale. Company like Castellian is really not only about hypersonics but hypersonics at scale. Yeah. Right. They want to make a lot of these. They're down the road from us. We want to help them make a lot of them.

That's cool. Yeah. [clears throat] Uh talk about what's unique about additive manufacturing in aluminum nickel. I think you know most people will be familiar with like 3D printed plastics but uh is it is it similar to just soldering lines of solder and just building up slowly like what else is going

it's the most advanced way to make a metal part and it's the [clears throat] most controllable way as well. It's not really related to um in terms of technology 3D printing of plastics, right? Maybe the narratives are tied a bit together push through a nozzle like a

we do something called um powder bed fusion. So we have a powdered aluminum or incanal in a build chamber. That build chamber has no oxygen in it. It's got nitrogen instead. So it's non-reactive in there. And then you've got high power lasers overhead. Yeah. And those high-owered lasers essentially melt laser weld one layer of that part at a time. You put a new layer of powder on top and you laser melt that layer to the layer below. So if you think about a part, think about it standing vertical and think about it as a layer cake, maybe 5,000 layers and you're laser welding with those lasers every single layer, layer by layer, and you're getting full data at every single layer. So maybe that one section of a defense product is 7,000 layers. Y

I get 7,000 layers of information on that build. So this is the most controllable

process in terms of improcess monitoring. It's the most advanced way to make a metal part. And you also end up being able to make exactly the net shape you want. Cuz when you have a cross-section, you can do the exterior and the interior and you have full control of that geometry. You vacuum away your unused powder, you end up with your net shape. So in terms of waste and efficiency of the process, you can get something that runs at a higher OEE when we talk about manufacturing efficiency and you can get something that actually performs better. So when we talk, you know, application focus, if you're a missile system, yeah,

we typically are seeing about 30% lighter structures while hitting the requirements. And more importantly, we're able to functionally integrate that structure with the fuel tank, with the avionics mounting, with that whole complex system. We're usually increasing fuel volume by about 30 to 40%. Okay? So if you're a missile and you get 30 40% more fuel volume, that's a real gamecher. And that's what the customer looks at divergent to do is one

get the best engineered product and that's going to change in a positive way the performance of your vehicle. And then two scale the manufacturing. And that second part is where in the modern age of defense where we are looking for volume is where there's a big gap right now. And that is part of the reason why divergent has gotten one so much business but two so much attention as well is it's starting to be viewed as that manufacturing layer. Right. Our mission statement 10 years ago build the 21st century industrial base.

It's actually starting to happen now.

That's amazing. Uh last question for me. Um the the pieces that seemed uh clearly made in your factory with additive manufacturing uh they looked white. They didn't look like metal. Have they been coated? What's the post-processing once you make a product?

Yeah. So our asprinted aluminum comes out almost like a silvery white color. So what you're seeing is probably some of that. But we do do coatings, especially on the defense side. We have a fully automated anodiz line. So, it's essentially a process where you clean the part, dip the part, and then one of those um stations, one of those tanks is actually electronically charged. So, when you're anodizing, you're essentially plating that part with a certain coating

that makes it more corrosive or more resistant to corrosion. Um for Navy applications, moisture, depending on the system, once it's fully integrated, if it's a stealth system, there might be a special paint that goes over top. there might be a gap and flush process over it and divergent will either do that or partner with the prime to do it

at least prep the material so that it can go get the special paint that might be classified or something exactly you're handing out

uh last question from my side wanted to understand the how uh local kind of politicians and how like what's your relationship like how does Torrance think about uh kind of neo primes and and overall building up the manufacturing base in Torrance

yeah we've had a strong relationship with the city, which is part of the reason we've been able to get fast permits for our factory. You can think about something like automated anodize. That's usually something that can take some years to stand up. We've been able to build relationships that allowed that to accelerate.

Um, are there states that are lower cost and probably even faster for permitting and manufacturing? Absolutely. Um, in terms of engineering headquarters, Los Angeles or the greater, you know, Southern California area is very special because we have the environment to create hardware and test hardware and we've got some of the brightest people in the world all centralized and now we have a VC community and general I'd say growth um, funding community that is focused in this area as well. So, Divergent will stay headquartered here. We will go through some serious scale production here as well, but over time you're going to see factories across all the states in the US and some of those factories will be at a lower cost basis uh than the ones here.

Yeah, very cool.

It's so awesome. I love it. I just everything about this company is so fun. Uh congratulations on all the progress and seriously thank you for bringing the car. What a treat. What a special moment.

We've been wanting to do a TBPN track day. You'll be one of the first to know on a date set. Got to bring it Yeah, you can come out and smoke us all. [laughter] Absolutely, dude. Laugh laughs around us. Uh, but thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. This was an absolute pleasure. And, uh, yeah, I'm I'm I'm sure we'll be talking much more over this year as you roll out everything.

Good to see you both. So, great.

We will talk to you soon. Good to see you.

Have a good rest of your day.

Enjoy the

I will tell you about Graphite code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And uh we have our Lambda Lightning round starting in just a few minutes. We have Andy Mcun from Cosmos coming on first. Then FabFit Fun, the co the co-founder and CEO of that company has launched a venture fund. He's coming on. And Aaron Katz, the co-founder and CEO of Clickhouse is coming on. Um and it sounds like we have Andy in the reream