3D printing is blowing up, with companies making everything from mechanical parts to clothing, and now, thanks to Divergent Microfactories, supercars can be added to the list. The San Francisco-based company promises that their 3D-printed supercar, the 700hp Blade, can go from 0-60mph in “around” two seconds—which, if true, will beat the Porsche 918 Spyder as the world’s fastest car.
The chassis is created entirely by 3D printing and is made up of 61 pounds of aluminum and 41 pounds of carbon fiber, totaling at just 102 pounds—the finished car weighs only 1,388 pounds. Divergent CEO Kevin Czinger recently told Forbes that how things are made “is much more important than how we fuel them and whether they have a tailpipe or not.” By utilizing 3-D printing, the building process alone reduces the “material energy input needed to manufacture” a regular car and ends up doing “1/3 of the environmental damage that […] an 85 kilowatt-an-hour electric car would generate.” Plus, the turbocharged, four-cylinder engine is able to run on compressed natural gas.
“We have got to rethink how we manufacture, because—when we go from two billion cars today to six billion cars in a couple of decades—if we don’t do that, we’re going to destroy the planet,” adds Czinger.
Though Divergent is only planning on making a limited amount of Blades, they are planning on selling their tech to other companies so they can make their own cars.
