car sports car

christian von koenigsegg:my name is christian von koenigsegg, i'm 40 years old. and for half of my life, i'vebeen on the quest to be a leader in the hybrid carindustry, utilizing swedish design combined with visionarytechnical solutions. our latest car, the agera r, isbuilt in the old hangers of a former swedish fighterjet squadron. their symbol, a ghost, is nowproudly painted on the back of every koenigsegg.

[car engine revving] christian von koenigsegg: so i'mhere with mattias who is responsible for our hardware andsoftware development when it comes to control systemsin the car. what's quite unique aboutkoenigsegg is that we develop the car in all aspects. what you see when you get closeto the car is the macro perspective. you kind of get confronted withthe paint work that we do

ourselves here, whichis very important. but we see the car as a whole. there is no difference betweenthe outside of the car or the deepest inside, the smallmicroelectronic controllers that we also design in-house. if this isn't done right, youdon't get the right feeling when you drive the car, theright engine characteristic, the right gear box andtransmission feeling, or stability control system, orelectronic differential that

we explained as well. it's all controlled bysoftware and hardware electronics. so we use a special cad softwareto engineer and design the circuit board. and all the components arechosen for our needs. and we try to use always thelatest technology, so it's as future safe as possibleand stays modern for a long period of time.

so even if you look at thebottom here, at the circuit board, it says koenigsegg. this is a transmissioncontrol unit. the engine control unitlooks very similar. we even cnc machine a billet boxto fit the circuit boards into, so they're well-protected and catered for. mattias rosengren: we havechosen the latest free scale microcontroller, which ispurposely made for automotive.

and one of the most importantthings for us is to keep it all together, to be able to doall these different issues, we are using the same-- exactly the same microcontroller on all these [inaudible]. even if they look verydifferent, they are, more or less, the same platforms ina software point of view. so it's only the applicationsoftware and application-specific hardwarepoints that are different.

we have [inaudible] all between these [inaudible]. and one of the benefitsof that is that when-- in our position, when we havethe possibility to write the software in all [inaudible],is that we can put functionality whereverwe want. even if a sensor is in oneissue, we could put the functionality using the sensorin another one, and vice-versa.

we can design the interfaceourselves. so even if, for example, we needa new function for the-- we need the engine management tocontrol a dial somewhere in the car, we can very easilyattach that wire to another issue closer in the car thanwe control the [inaudible]. and sometimes, of course,difficult. but that's not-- christian von koenigsegg:that's not the most difficult part.

mattias rosengren: that'sthe fun part. that's not the hard part. the hard part is to be ableto find time to do everything you want. this is the top layer, andthis is the bottom layer. then there are layers inside. some of them are just pureground layers and some of them are pure voltage layers. this is the schematics, which isthe software where you tell

the system which pin onwhich ic should be connected to each other. and then you transferthis information to the layout program. i do it myself. there is something calledautorouting in the system, but i never use that because itdoesn't make very beautiful-- it's too complicated. it doesn't work,in my opinion.

for simple circuitboards, yes. but autorouting israrely used. in a way, it's a design becausethe way you put the copper reflects whatit looks like. christian von koenigsegg:you have to consider electromagnetic fields. so there can be conflicts ifit's not done correctly. and this autorouting does rarelyconsider those aspects. it's more experience thatcan avoid potential

electromagnetic field issues. if you have one copper routing,which has a lot of energy in it, you want to havethat in a layer far away from something very sensitive. in a bigger company, you wouldhave hardware people there, software people there, enginebuilders over there. and they would gettogether and meet sometimes, talk about strategy. but here we have the same peopledoing all of these

aspects together in avery small group. so when we're designing thecircuit board, we're considering what the softwareshould be like in a more direct way than that someoneelse is thinking about that. and as our software engineersare also part of our engine development team and chassisdevelopment team, they consider aspect-- maybe i shouldhave this function for this when i'm driving the carwith this chassis setup. i should maybe put this in.

they're kind of thinking moreas a whole, which is completely unique. if i'm guessing, i would saymaybe we're spending 15%, 20% of our development time andbudget on stuff like this. but it's all integrated inthe other items as well. it's definitely the brain, butit's part of the soul. i mean, it is the brain, but itgives part of the soul in the experience. because this is reallythe controlling

function of the mechanics. mattias rosengren: every singleline of code inside these [inaudible] have been written by us. and also, this software thatwe're using in the pc is also entirely written by us. christian von koenigsegg:it's a never-ending story of evolution. it is exactly what mattiassaid, what is

your biggest challenge? it's time. because if you had all the timein the world from the get-go, you would never haveto update software. because you always come up withnew ideas, there are new systems in the car. customers ask fornew features. and it's an endless possibilityto come up with new ideas and improve,basically.

and for sure, we do that onservice for the cars. and also, upgrade older carswith newer hardware systems, so we can put new softwareinto them-- if the customers want it. they're fine as they are, butyou can get new features, new experiences if you do.