My name is Christian von Koenigsegg.
I'm 40 years old, and for half of my life, I've been on the
quest to be a leader in the hybrid car industry, utilizing
Swedish design combined with visionary technical solutions.
Our latest car, the Agera R, is built in the old hangars of
a former Swedish fighter jet squadron.
Their symbol, a ghost, is now probably painted on the back
of every Koenigsegg.
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So the interior of the car is as important as
anything else we do.
We spend a lot of energy and time optimizing and making it
really special and unique, and functional, of course.
I mean, this is the place where the driver/owner and the
passenger spend most of his time, so it's important that
you feel really special inside the car and
that it works well.
So I'm going to tell you a little bit about our ghost
lighting system that we developed for the Agera.
Basically, we wanted something elegant, clear, unique, and
ergonomic and nice for the driver and the occupant to be
able to control the car and its function in the best
possible way.
We thought it would be pretty cool if we could have a metal
bottom, an aluminum bottom, which is just as smooth and
nice, and you don't see or feel anything until the light
turns on, and then it shows up what it actually is.
And we had to spend a lot of time to get the lighting
correct, to have it shiny enough on the inside, to have
the surface thin enough so that the light can penetrate
through the very small etched laser holes.
And the holes were optimized in size so that they're hardly
visible when the light is off, but very visible when the
light is on.
Also, we have a philosophy that inside the car,
basically, the only materials you can touch is either
leather, carbon fiber, or metal.
There's no plastic anywhere.
Here is the circuit board going behind, and we actually
have a light in here, but also four small LEDs, very strong
LEDs, inside each button.
You see this one is naked, so this one goes like this and
moves together with the button.
Then they're all spring mounted on this very unique
circular spring, which was developed.
We used a special spring steel with a certain thickness and a
certain shape to get the right spring effect going to have a
really nice click for each button.
So we mimic the same kind of features on
the steering wheel.
First of all, of course, it has to be manufactured in
carbon fiber, baked in the autoclave.
Then it has to be clear coated in the paint shop.
Then we put the foam agent underneath the leather, and
then the leather.
And that's about a one-day process just
to apply the leather.
And then we have to fit all the electronics, and the
paddle shifters, and circuit boards, and make it
into what it is.
So the steering wheel is a one-piece hollow carbon fiber
that we designed here, and it's very optimized to the
interior of the car.
It's a little bit thinner up top, so it's easier to see the
instrumentation.
It's got a flat bottom to make it easier to get in and out of
the car, and it's got an optimized grip section.
Also, underneath the leather, there's a foam agent to make
the steering wheel more compliant and to take out some
high-frequency vibration that it's not--
well, that dilutes the input from the road, basically.
Here we have also ghost lighted buttons.
As you can see, they're just shiny aluminum until
the light comes on.
And this goes into the steering wheel here, one on
the left side and one on the right side.
And there's a lot of functionality and processing
going on in the steering wheel, so we actually
developed a circuit board for the steering wheel, which has
CAN bus communication and CAN bus protocol going through
just a small amount of cables.
The reason why we have CAN bus in the steering wheel is to
reduce the amount of cables that has to go through the
axle and that has to spin around all the time when
you're turning.
But it also gives us flexibility to have different
functions for the buttons.
We can change symbols and change software, and then we
have completely different function
without rerouting cables.
Another thing which is very important is that we have
these shifters mounted to the steering wheel.
And we spent a lot of time making sure we have the right
click feel, so it's like a trigger, basically.
It's either on or off.
You can't press it halfway.
And it's also important that it has a solid mounting base.
If you want to press it by the tip, it doesn't flex at all.
And they're very long for being steering wheel mounted.
So you get very good ergonomics when you're turning
the steering wheel.
But most important is how they feel.
They have a really nice trigger feel click to them.
So there are several different spring elements inside the
shifter to have the right feel.
All in all, it's a very unique product, the steering wheel
with all its functions.
And I would say normally it would take almost the size of
our company just to develop a thing like a steering wheel,
but that's something we just do on the side.
And of course, the final part is the airbag that goes in.
So it's a quite complex product, the steering wheel
alone by itself.
Here we have an aluminum part.
All the aluminum parts inside the car are machined from
billet aluminum.
And you can see here on the backside there are some traces
of machining.
On the front side, of course, the machining time is much
longer and slower to make it really smooth.
After it's machined, it's polished in a special
polishing machine.
It's not just tumbled.
It's a proprietary polishing system, which makes it
extremely smooth.
And after that, it's anodized to get a good surface
protection.
And this is the process that all the aluminum parts in the
interior go through.
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